1 Kings
7 – The house of the Lord
8 – You alone know the hearts
9 – Good for nothing
10 – A great throne of ivory
11 – Loved many foreign women
The Super Bowl is over, and Spring Training is supposed to be happening. People are supposed to by ready to spend more on baseball cards than since the World Series ended. Baseball is off and it looks like it will be off for a while. It is all about money. A vendor told me today that one particular company wanted an 80% profit margin. It sounded insane as even the tech companies do good to make 30% profit margins. I am used to 5% shooting for 10% being the norm for companies making money. I realized that the owners of the baseball teams are not content to just make money, they want a profit margin. The players have a huge profit margin between what they make as players and what they would make without baseball. I can only guess who is going to cave.
This section of Kings is about Solomon and his actions as king. We praise him as wise; the world praises him for being rich. Solomon’s temple is probably looked on more favorably than God Himself, by the world. It was called the House of the Lord, but I pictured it more as His living room where He came to sit with His children. To read about its construction is to be overwhelmed with the expense and lavishness of it. It is sad to think how all that beauty and wealth was destroyed. But I view it as a waste. Our church’s building is attractive in its own way, but God never needed a house to live in nor could any manmade thing hold a candle to the true beauty of God’s creation. The Temple served and will serve God’s purpose, but its function was no greater than the tent that the tabernacle was before it.
Our last bible study discussed the ability to discern whether people are believers or not. As we know from Kings, only God knows anyone’s heart, but we can fine tune our interactions with others based on the fruit of their lives. Not seeing fruit and knowing one’s heart is not God’s are two separate things. We are not to treat others poorly based on out judgements, but God knows who loves Him and who does not, and He will deal with them in His own time.
Good for nothing. I found this in a recently read Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. It was funny. Calvin is not one after God’s own heart and while the idea is to laugh, many times his actions are just tragic. I made an ill informed purchase recently and wanted to chalk it up as good for nothing. But I dug deeper and realized my failure was another opportunity to learn to be the methodical person God has made me and to not rely on my own fallen self.
A great throne of ivory. I like ivory. I hate that the desire for ivory has ever led to torture or death for an elephant. When I was younger, I had the desire to own something in ivory to feel a kinship with nature that my young life and scouts instilled in me. Once I learned that people slaughtered elephants for their tusks and left them dead or dying, I no longer wanted to have anything ivory in protest of this evil, despicable behavior. Using God’s resources is one thing, abusing them is another. This phrase originally brought a beautiful image to my mind, but now all I see is a pile of dead elephants with their tusks cut out.
Loved many foreign women. I feel like I have always had problems with a man having more than one wife, but I know there are Biblical examples and real-world examples of it not being just pure selfish evil. The relationships between man and woman is an important topic when discussing Solomon and his Biblical works. His father and mother, the Song of Solomon, his many wives, and on and on. I know in this day and age, Christ has called us to the one-man one-woman relationship as ideal, but I know love can overcome many failings. But just as I was a product of a “broken home” and have grown to be more than that, I know Solomon was used by God to teach us, wives, concubines, and everything else under the sun.
Just as baseball is dealing with the dispute over money, the Olympic games are dealing with cheating, fairness, and the thrill of competition. A fifteen-year-old girl is good enough to be called one of the greatest skaters of all time. She is also impressionable enough to be surrounded by adults arguing what is reasonable and pushing the limits of physical and mental pressures to make her so. Luck had it so that I saw this girls skate on tv. She made a mistake, but her performance was beyond anything I had seen despite the biased commentators’ statements. I wish the money and the cheating were not so prevalent in competition today. But the rich want to be richer, the competitors want to win, and our sinful natures mean that some sin to win or sin to succeed. I believe we should do our part to minimize cheating and overcharging, but every person has a story, and it is on an individual level we are called to relate. So do not judge your neighbor, love them.