Children Playing in the Streets

Imagine a city square that is almost silent. A few stones stacked up. A dog asleep in the dust. No laughter. No games. Now listen to what God says that same square is going to sound like.

It is the fourth year of King Darius of Persia. The exiles have been back in Jerusalem for some years, and the new temple is going up, slowly. But the city is still thin and fragile. Many families stayed behind in Babylon. The walls are rubble. People are wondering whether God's promises are really for them, or only for their great-grandparents. A group of men has even come from the town of Bethel with a question for the priests and prophets. Should we keep on fasting and mourning, as we have done for so many years? Through the prophet Zechariah, God answers with a string of promises. Some of the most beautiful are in chapter eight.

It begins with God's deep love. “I was jealous for Zion with great jealousy.” That is not the petty jealousy of someone who is envious. It is the fierce, protective love of a husband or a parent who will not let anything harm the one they love. Then God says: “I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts the holy mountain.” God has come back. He is going to live right in the middle of his people again. And the place where he lives will be known for truth.

And what will that look like? Not armies. Not gold. Something much more ordinary, and much more wonderful. “There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age.” Grandmothers and grandfathers, so old they need a walking stick, sitting in the sun in the open squares. People living long, peaceful lives. And then: “The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.” Can you hear it? Running feet. Shouting. Someone counting for hide and seek. Someone crying because they fell over, and someone else helping them up. A city safe enough for children to play outside.

God knows the people find this hard to believe. So he asks them a question. If this seems marvellous, too good to be true, to the few people left, should it also seem too hard for me? Then he makes one more promise. I will save my people from the land of the east and from the land of the west. I will bring them home, and they will live in the middle of Jerusalem. “And they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness.” It is the oldest promise of all, the one God made at Mount Sinai, spoken again to a tired little community. Nothing has been forgotten.

The fasts the men from Bethel asked about were real days of mourning. Zechariah mentions fasts in the fifth and seventh months, and later in the fourth and tenth. The fast of the fifth month remembered the month when the Babylonians burned the temple and the houses of Jerusalem, as the book of Second Kings records. Later in this same chapter, God promises that those sad fasts will become cheerful feasts, days of joy and gladness.

Children playing in the streets. You'll find this in the book of Zechariah, chapter eight, verses one to eight. A promise of God living with his people, of old people resting in safety and children laughing in the squares. So here is a question to carry with you. What does it tell you about God, that his picture of a good future includes children at play?