I said, “What in the world is that?”  He said, “This is a bushel basket on a journey. It holds the sin of everyone, everywhere.” Zechariah 5:6

When the people returned to Judah from Babylon, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah were instrumental in the rebuilding of their Temple in Jerusalem. After living as a defeated people for so long, the Jews had started feeling defeated. When we are told repeatedly that we are at the bottom of the ladder and nothing we can do can move us upward, we lose motivation. We start to accept the values placed on us by those around us.

Part of Zechariah’s place in the rebuilding of the Temple was to restore the people’s concept of themselves. If we think we are invisible or not worthy of notice, what would be the point of trying to do something significant?

God sent an angel to show Zechariah a series of visions that he shared with his people. This scripture is part of the seventh vision. There was a big basket up in the sky. Zechariah then saw two other women flying toward the basket to airlift into the sky. When asked where they were taking the basket, the angel replied that a garage had been built to house it, and the basket would be stored there.

God wanted his people to prepare a house for him. Not that he needed a house because God is bigger than the world. Why would he want to squish himself into a space with boundaries? I believe that God wanted his people to think of him and to pay attention to what he asked. Before the people could start to build such a place for God, however, they first had to realize that they could do this thing.

If we saw a huge basket in the sky and were told that it contained everything that we had done wrong and it was heading off to a place far away, that would be an amazing feeling. It seems like we are often told of all the things we do wrong, but we don’t hear about those things we get right very often. I don’t think that it’s because we seldom do the right things but because our disasters are frequently spectacular. If I didn’t have to worry about correcting everything I’ve done wrong, that would be a great relief, and I could focus on doing something significant – like rebuild a Temple for God.

Jesus provided a basket for us. With his death and his resurrection, he gathered up all the sins in the world to put into that basket which he then carried off. That doesn’t mean that everything we do will be right and good, but it means that we can talk honestly to him about our sins and then we can go forward, continuing to build God’s Temple – within ourselves. How special is that!

Becky Gillette is a former teacher, newspaper reporter, and preacher who seeks to take an original approach to life’s lessons. She is the author of “Jessie’s Corner: Something to Think About,” a collection of articles which she wrote for a weekly newspaper.