Ezra 3

So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the sound was heard afar off. v.13

Read chapter 3
Some cried and some shouted for joy.  Tears of joy some might say.  Joy of finally returning to their home land, so overwhelmed with joy they cant help but cry.  Yet this also could be showing two different reactions of the people: some crying out of sadness and some shouting out of happiness. In verse twelve it says the old men were the ones weeping.  Those that had returned to the land 70 years later were probably few in number that could still remember what the old temple and walls were like as many of the older generation had died by the time of the return; children that were born in Babylon were the ones returning to the land they had never known.  These old men remember the great temple built by Solomon that was one of the great wonders of the world that people came to see; they remember the temple that had the ark of the covenant,  the tablets of Moses, the shechinah glory that filled the holy place.  Yet seeing this temple being rebuilt now after destruction and captivity they knew it would never be the same and couldn't be built to what it once was, all those things that made the temple what it was were gone.  The ones that didn't or couldn't remember the old days of the temple were looking at what God was doing now in their time and this is what was brining them to shout for joy having only known bondage in a foreign land.  How easy it is to wish upon times past and try to live in the past yet that can bring such sorrow; yet how easy it is too to only live in the present and not learn from the past.  We need to learn from the past, but live in the moment God has us in today.  How may you be trapped in the past and missing what God is doing now?  How are you so caught up in modern trends and not realizing God same lessons from generation to generation?