Domestic Break 15/40: Even Solomon

I spent a couple of hours sitting in the waiting room at the mechanic's today and that gave me plenty of time to start getting caught up on my reading! Still three days behind - but now that moving phase one is behind me I should hopefully be able to make that up. :)


Text: 2 Samuel and 1 Kings:

The thoughts from my "We Want What We Want" entry have been on my mind a lot. So, when I came across this verse about King Solomon it struck me:

1 Kings 10:23-24; 11:1-6


King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift . . .
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter - Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sionians, and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, "you must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods." Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. . . As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been.




I just shook my head and said, "Even Solomon."

Solomon has always been one of my biblical heroes. One of the earliest Bible stories I remember hearing was about how Solomon prayed for wisdom - not strength or riches - and God granted him that wisdom. Since then - wisdom is something I too have desired.

There are choices I’ve made that make me extremely angry with myself because I feel like that I wasted that gift of wisdom that God did indeed give me. Like Solomon, I too "held fast to [my choices]."

To see that even the great and wise Solomon fell victim to demanding his own desires over God's best is a bit reassuring to me. I guess somewhere in the back of my brain I assume an arrogance that I'm the first person to make foolish choices who knew better. haha. but - no - nothing new under the sun.

Even Solomon sinned. Even Solomon did things that were expressly forbidden by God. Even Solomon had his devotion turned away.


However- unlike Solomon - I don't want the end of my life to be recorded as "So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord, he did not follow the Lord completely."

Or, to put it another way:

"I don't want to go through life asking, "What if I had given everything instead of going through the motions?" (Matthew West song)