Year 1 · Q2 · Week 17 — Erev Shabbat 19 September 2026
Parashah: Ha’azinu (הַאֲזִינוּ — “Listen!”)
Devotional Week 17: Who Is Left Among You?
This Week’s Readings (Israel schedule)
Torah: Deuteronomy 32:1–52
Haftarah: 2 Samuel 22:1–51
Apostolic: Revelation 15:1-8
Moses calls heaven and earth to witness and gives Israel a song to carry: the Rock who fathered them is just and faithful, even when they are not. The song is given so that when the music has stopped, the words remain. What you sing is what you will remember in the dry season.
Key Verse
“But many of the older priests and Levites and heads of families, who had seen the first temple, wept loudly when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy.”
— Ezra 3:12 (NET)
Household Question: Where in your life are you tempted to despise a small beginning — to measure what God is doing now against what he did before? What would it look like to shout for joy over a foundation instead of weeping over what is not yet built?
Who Is Left Among You?
Haggai asked the hard question directly: “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?” And then, immediately: “But now be strong.” The smallness of the present was not evidence that God had abandoned his promise. It was a foundation — and foundations are not the building. They are what the building stands on.
Nehemiah rebuilt walls that had been rubble for a century and a half. Ezra read the law to people who had forgotten most of it. These were not glorious days by any external measure. But the promise-plan was moving through them exactly as it had moved through the golden age of David and Solomon. God had not changed his address.
MAKING IT PERSONAL • ROOTS
One of the cruelest things comparison does is make the good thing in front of you feel like nothing. The old priests wept at a foundation because they were comparing it to a memory. They missed the moment they were standing in.
God meets you where your foundation actually is — not where you wish it were, not where it used to be. The call to be strong comes in the same breath as the honest acknowledgment of smallness. He sees what you have. He is not waiting for you to rebuild before he shows up.⁴⁸
Where are you comparing your present season to a former one and missing what God is actually doing right now in front of you?
SHARING IT WITH SOMEONE • REACH
Think of someone in your life who is in a rebuilding season — someone who is laying a foundation in a marriage, a faith, a recovery, a calling — and who keeps measuring the foundation against what they imagined the finished building would look like by now.
Nehemiah finished the wall in fifty-two days, and his enemies could not explain it: they realized this work had been done with the help of God. The size of the task never determined whether God was present. The presence of God is what determined whether the task could be done.⁴⁹
Who in your life is discouraged by the smallness of what they are building — and how could you help them see the foundation they are standing on rather than the building they have not yet finished?
SHARING IT WITH OTHERS • HARVEST
The postexilic community had to learn to celebrate a foundation. They had to teach their children to honor a work in progress rather than despise it for not being the finished thing. That is a lesson every household has to learn in every generation.
What foundation is God laying in your family right now? It may look small. The old timers may be weeping. But shout for joy. Foundations are where everything starts. And the God who promised to fill this house with glory has not changed his word.
Where in your life are you tempted to despise a small beginning — to measure what God is doing now against what he did before? What would it look like to shout for joy over a foundation instead of weeping over what is not yet built?
Kaiser’s Corner
“Thus, to aid the sagging spirits of a downtrodden people, the Chronicler revived the image of the kingdom at the height of its greatest power in order to set forth the glories of Messiah’s kingdom.”
— Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Promise-Plan of God • Chapter 7: The Postexilic Promise
Journal
Write about something God is building in your life that looks small right now. Name the foundation that is being laid. Then write what you believe the finished work will look like — and thank him for the foundation, not just the building.
47 Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Promise-Plan of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), Chapter 7: The Postexilic Promise.
48 “Perfectionism vs. Excellence,” vimeo.com/kathykoch.
49 “Competence: What Do I Do Well?,” vimeo.com/kathykoch.
Scripture quotations are from the NET Bible® (netbible.com) unless otherwise noted.