Bible Reading: 1 Kings 8:54-61

When Solomon finished offering this entire prayer of petition to the Lord, he rose from before the altar of the Lord, where he had been kneeling with his hands outstretched toward heaven.

He stood and blessed the whole community of Israel, saying in a loud voice:

"Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, just as he promised. Not a single word has gone unfulfilled of the entire generous promise he made through his servant Moses.

May the Lord, our God, be with us as he was with our fathers and may he not forsake us nor cast us off.

May he draw our hearts to himself, that we may follow him in everything and keep the commands, statues, and ordinances which he enjoined on our fathers.

May this prayer I have offered to the Lord, our God, be present to him day and night, that he may uphold the cause of his servant and of his people Israel as each day requires,

that all the peoples of the earth may know the Lord is God and there is no other.

You must be wholly devoted to the Lord, our God, observing his statutes and keeping his commandments, as on this day."

***
This is a beautiful prayer by King Solomon. So I have closed this busy day of blogging for now with this as an optimistic and inspirational role model.

However, I would be remiss if I did not remind you that despite years of sanctification and holiness, and of having seen God with his own eyes twice, even King Solomon in his old age fell away from God and worshipped idols.

I do not mention this to depress you all, but actually to demonstrate that no one should be ashamed of being a sinner. There is no human, even one as blessed in person by God as King Solomon was, and who then betrays and lets down God himself, who is not able to recognize that all humans are sinful and only honesty and grace from God make them worthy. The shame is not in being a sinner, but the shame is in thinking that your sin is stronger than God, and his ability to "fix it" and forgive.

I often reference the Old Testament because while you know Jesus in the New Testament, and through Jesus you know God and the Kingdom of God, in the Old Testament you see specific interactions and endless opportunities for fall, forgiveness, and grace directly from God. These lessons (oh, I dislike that word!) or rather these real life examples of real people who had real dialogue with God, and who were not parables, give a solidity that only reinforces what Jesus said and did, not distract from Jesus or be made irrelevant by him.

For example, in the New Testament the usual examples of those who greatly disappointed Jesus, but who through his grace, were forgiven and made saints are of course St. Peter, who denied Jesus three times, and St. Paul, who as Saul, persecuted Christians and participated in their martyrdom. Examples of sinners who were called to Jesus were St. Matthew, the tax collector.

But is it not encouraging to go back in time and reference those very qualities of falling from God, even when he has been so generous, as he was with King Solomon, and seeing that even those with absolutely no excuse to do so, are, after all, only human and do fail and sin. It is one thing to deny Jesus when your life is at stake and you are on the run, as Peter was, or to be such a zealous believer of the strictest Jewish law, as Saul did, so as not to recognize the Messiah until he pushes him down in his glory as the resurrected Christ. But it is in a way much worse to be the consecrated priest and king of the Israelites, given every glory and treasure, bestowed with both wisdom and spirit, and to know God's presence twice in one's life, and still turn to idols while King of Israel? And so at the end of his life King Solomon turned away from God, and God had to punish him. But God did not doom him. God still saved King Solomon, and you can read what God actually said and did in chastisement to King Solomon in 1 Kings 11. This is why I keep pointing people back to reading not only the New Testament but the Old Testament, for the reality of God's justice and mercy, the encouragement that as Jesus said, and I paraphrase, "Who is good? Only God is good." People have made bad and strange choices throughout humanity and throughout their faith history, yes, even right to God's face, standing within the very gifts that he had graced them with. Bible reading when one is discouraged at the gravity of one's sins and weaknesses is one way to gain through the Holy Spirit the gifts of fortitude and renewed faith in God's forgiveness. Remember, the Holy Spirit was there when the books of the Bible were written, and the Holy Spirit is there when you read them and search for meaning, truth and inspiration.

So when I turned to the Bible one last time before shutting down the computer and going to bed, and it fell open to that page in 1 Kings 8, always alert to the Holy Spirit's direction, I thought that it might be a comfort, with some commentary.

Good night! :-)