If you saw my FaceBook page update, you know that our youngest son recently got engaged! Wedding bells are ringing some time next year, and we could not be happier! For this mom who has been the only female in a house full of guys all these years, it is going to be such fun to have a daughter! Someone besides me who might like romantic girl movies and the occasional shopping spree. So life has taken yet another exciting turn.
In the meantime, I’ve been researching Solomon’s life. It is impossible to write about the women he loved without understanding who he was, what he thought, and to attempt to figure out the motives behind his actions.
Of course, one of the main characteristics that is known of Solomon was his wisdom. What I suspected, but did not know for sure until this week of study was that Solomon was already considered a wise man by his father David before he ever requested wisdom from the Lord. In David’s final words to his son, he said, “Act therefore according to your wisdom…” One version states it, “You are a wise man.”
So Solomon already had a desire for wisdom long before God spoke to him in the dream. And I was thinking how often God seems to work through our desires. His will for our lives is often rooted in longings He has already placed within us. If Solomon had been a foolish son, his answer to God’s offer of, “Ask what I shall give you,” might have been a selfish desire for power or riches. Instead, he asked God for wisdom, something he already highly valued, to rightly judge Israel.
As I pondered the question God posed to Solomon — to ask of Him anything He wished — I thought about what I would have answered. I used to think, “Well, of course, I would ask for wisdom too.” It seems like a noble thing to ask for.
But now I don’t think that would be my answer. If God came to me in a dream and told me to ask of Him whatever I wanted and He would grant it, I decided that I would ask Him for greater ability to trust Him. To let go of my anxieties and to trust Him with every detail of my life that seeks to put my nerves on edge. Honestly, there are a lot of them!
I guess you could say I have always been more of a Martha than a Mary – “worried and troubled about many things.” Though I have always had a Mary heart, I can get uptight and fret too easily over things that are beyond my control. (We only think we have control over life. Most of the time that control is an illusion.)
Yet if God can be trusted with my eternity, surely He can be trusted to handle the things that trouble me here on earth. He is, after all, the only one who is Sovereign. And He repeatedly reminds us not to worry, to cast our cares on Him, to fear not. So why is that so easy to say and so hard to do?
I wish I had an answer to that question, but I don’t. Which is why I would ask for a greater capacity to trust Him in all things. To trust Him for the salvation of loved ones or the mending of broken lives or the plot lines of a story or the details of a vacation or a move or any number of hundreds of little things that life throws at me each day, each week.
If God would ask me, that’s what I would seek. And even if He never appears to me in a dream as He did for Solomon, I would still ask for that trust. I daresay it is a prayer He wouldn’t mind hearing. He wants our trust, and He wants us to bring our burdens to Him.
How about you? If God came to you and asked you to request one thing of Him, what would it be? I’m curious.
