Daily Reflections Feb 7, 2018

1 Kings 10: 1 - 10 ; Mark 7: 14 - 23.

“Blessed are you my Lord who abides within me. Blessed are your teachings and your wisdom. My heart is filled with the treasures of thy wisdom. Thy presence inspires me with Love and mercy. May thy presence never depart from me, for all that I have is within me and what the world showers upon me may never be mine”.

The Lord blessed King Solomon and lit a lamp in his heart that gave witness to the greatness of the gift of Wisdom that God bestowed upon him. Never had anyone ever heard of a king nor a man, with such wise words and such wise actions. Through the Lord’s wisdom, King Solomon was able to maximise the benefits of trade for Israel and arrange the infrastructure of his kingdom in a way nobody had ever witnessed. God blessed everything that King Solomon had and everything that King Solomon did because God was delighted to bless King David through his progeny. This gives evidence that God continues to bless a person who pleases Him through that person’s children and even further down through the person’s descendants. But we must keep in mind that God blessed King Solomon not only with wisdom but with security too. King Solomon used the benefit of that security and that wisdom to increase his own greatness, his wealth and the wealth of Israel. Yes, for as long as King Solomon remained faithful and grateful to God he did continue to worship God in the Temple at Jerusalem and God continued to bless him for his faithfulness. In the book of 1 Kings 10: 1 - 10, the Bible describes the astonishment expressed and displayed by Queen Sheba of Ethiopia as she witnessed King Solomon’s greatness, Jerusalem’s greatness and the greatness of Israel. She did realise the necessity to bless the God of Israel for the greatness she witnessed, but there is no mention of her desiring to be part of that blessing. Yet she did bestow material gifts upon King Solomon to forge a political alliance with him. King Solomon gave witness to God’s glory by displaying God’s blessings upon Israel, but he did not use his wisdom to increase God’s glory by inducing Queen Sheba to embrace the Jewish faith and bring her people under the blessing of this Magnificent God of Israel. King Solomon did not profess the holiness required for the wisdom bestowed upon him. He did not profess his faith and he did not convince her to bend her knee to the True Lord of all the earth. He did not Testify to God’s Glory and spread the faith to all he met. King Solomon did not spread the good news of God’s love for Israel and His faithfulness to the Covenants made with Abraham and even King David. King Solomon did not evangelise for the God of Israel, he simply enjoyed the benefits of the blessings bestowed upon him and he shared his wisdom through other books that he wrote. This attitude that King Solomon displayed gives evidence of what was really within his heart. Hence, when he was tested by the devil through his many marriages with foreign princesses, he failed to be faithful in his devotion to the God of Israel and the God of his father King David.

In the Gospel of Mark 7: 14 - 23, Jesus teaches us this magnificent wisdom. That if we develop love and righteousness for God in our hearts; and if we nourish the Holy Spirit with our devotion and worship of God in Spirit and truth, we will always be pure and holy from within. And as we remain holy from within our hearts, we will never be defiled because there will be no opportunity for the temptation to defile our character. Our understanding of God and his devotion may be extremely poor. The quality of our worship may not be comparable with the worship performed by angels in heaven and our wisdom may be miniscule to what God bestowed upon King Solomon. But we don’t require that wisdom. What we really need is true love and a sincere earnest effort to love God. God has already gifted us with the tools we need. God declared our bodies as the Temple of the Holy Spirit and God has indeed bestowed us with His Holy Spirit whereby He always abides within us. We need to maintain the quality of our lives through sober habits and positive attitude to guide our basic desires to do what pleases God.

The beginning of this journey is to deny ourselves of all vanity including desires that make us greedy and vain. We must deny ourselves the love of materialism and luxuries. And we must be open to make the sacrifices required to keep ourselves living holy lives because no goodness and righteousness is possible without us clinging to God in prayer and devotion. Moreover, all our devotion and prayers will lack strength if we adhere to the desire of vanity and material wealth. Only when we can live our lives with all our focus on God to fulfill the first four of the ten commandments and then love our neighbour as ourselves to fulfill the following six of the ten commandments; only then, we will practice true worship in spirit and truth. Then we will be sparkling clean from within and no defilement can erupt from within us.

The teaching is probably very hard and hence in His immense wisdom and unfathomable mercy, God has decided to bestow us with His gift of Mercy to express the perfection of His Love for us. God displayed His love for us by temporarily diminishing the external greatness and glory of His Son Jesus Christ when Jesus was born a human to live a human life for over three decades. And finally, God went a step further by instructing His beloved and Holy Son to take all the sins of the world upon His shoulder, suffer and die for us so that we may have a clean slate in a single sweep of God’s merciful hand. Now with this gift of mercy God has bestowed us with the opportunity of Salvation and then His companionship for Eternity.
-By Bro Maryo