The Scaffolding Around St. Paul's

When Sir Christopher Wren began rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London in 1666, the old cathedral had been one of the tallest structures in Europe. Its spire had pierced the sky at nearly five hundred feet. But that glory was gone — reduced to charred rubble and broken stone.

For thirty-five years, Londoners walked past the construction site and shook their heads. The new foundation seemed modest. The rising walls looked plain compared to the soaring Gothic arches they remembered. Critics in Parliament openly questioned whether Wren's design could ever match what had been lost. Some wept for the old cathedral, just as the elders in Haggai's day wept remembering Solomon's temple.

But Wren kept building. And when the scaffolding finally came down in 1710, London gasped. The great dome — the first of its kind in England — rose 365 feet into the sky, a masterpiece that would endure for over three centuries. It survived the Blitz. It became the symbol of an entire nation's resilience.

God spoke through Haggai to a discouraged people staring at an unfinished temple: "The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former." The Almighty was not asking them to recreate the past. He was doing something new. The same hands that felt inadequate for the task were the very hands God chose to build with. What looks modest in the scaffolding stage may yet become a cathedral.