I had everything a man could desire! … Anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure. I even found great pleasure in hard work, a reward for all my labors. But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere. [Ecclesiastes 2:8b-10-11 (NLT)]
When considering Solomon’s excess and riches, I recalled comedian George Carlin’s “Stuff” routine. First performed for Comic Relief in 1986, Carlin made fun of our obsession with having stuff. Along with being the King of Israel, Solomon was the King of Stuff. Denying himself nothing, along with his elaborate throne of gold and ivory, he displayed 500 ornamental gold shields on the walls of his palace. Rather than silver, all the king’s goblets and eating utensils were made of pure gold. He had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots, and 12,000 horseman.
Because Solomon controlled the chief trading routes north from the Arabian Peninsula, he collected the equivalent of over $1.2 billion a year in tribute from Arabian kings, merchants, and traders as well as Israel’s governors. It wasn’t just the queen of Sheba who gifted him with precious jewels, spices, and tons of gold. Everyone who visited the king brought him gifts of stuff: silver, gold, spices, weapons, clothing, mules, and horses. Every three years, Solomon collected even more stuff when his fleet of ships returned with additional horses, mules, gold, silver, robes, ivory, apes, and monkeys. The king collected women as readily as he did gold. With 1,000 women in his household, just imagine the amount of stuff the harem held! Nevertheless, despite all his “stuff,” Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes are not the words of a happy or contented man.
Carlin described our houses as places to keep our stuff while we go out and buy even more of it, but having lots of stuff becomes a burden. We must take care of it, insure it, worry about it, and find a place to put it. Some people have so much stuff, they hire professional organizers to arrange it while others have so much stuff they rent storage units for some of it! With over 50,000 such facilities here, self-storage is one of the fastest growing American industries. It’s easy to imagine what Carlin would make of the over two billion square-feet of space that now are dedicated to storing all our stuff!
You’ll never see a U-Haul following a hearse and Solomon knew that he couldn’t take his riches with him. Nevertheless, he continued to amass stuff and so do we. None of it, however, seemed to satisfy the king any more than our stuff can satisfy us. Denying himself nothing, Solomon claimed to have had everything a man could desire. Nevertheless, contentment eluded him and the king came to hate life and find everything meaningless.
Despite his wisdom, Solomon didn’t understand that wealth and material possessions can’t bring us joy, meaning, fulfillment, or purpose. Exquisite gems, hammered gold shields, golden goblets, and a colossal harem were a poor substitute for a relationship with God. Contentment can’t be found in stuff, no matter how beautiful; it’s found in our confidence in the sufficiency of God. As for those 500 gold shields and the rest of the palace’s treasures of which Solomon was so proud—they were carried off as plunder by Shishak of Egypt just five years after Solomon’s son Rehoboam became king!
You say, “If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.” You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled. [Charles Haddon Spurgeon]
“He’d always looked at religion as a crutch for people who were too scared to do life by themselves,” is the way author Chris Fabry described a character in his book June Bug. That description made me think of Karl Marx’s frequently paraphrased statement: “Religion is the opium of the people.” Sigmund Freud had an equally low opinion of religion and described it as a form of wish fulfillment. Thinking of religion as little more than a man-made coping mechanism for dealing with the harsh realities of life, Fabray’s character, Marx, and Freud disparaged it along with things like crutches and pain relievers.
I lost my first father the same year I gained my second one. I only had my birth father for twenty years, but I was blessed to have my father-in-law for thirty-seven! Dad J lived his life well—with vigor, enthusiasm, joy, laughter, and a whole lot of love. Compassionate and generous, responsible and helpful, good-humored and resourceful, he was a man of faith and integrity (with a large dose of mischief on the side). The Bible might describe him as a man after God’s heart.
While editing photos, I came to one of a pipevine swallowtail. Seeing it on my computer rather than the camera’s viewfinder, I realized it had seen far better days. Its once beautiful wings were tattered and torn, only one “tail” remained, an antenna was missing, and, with many of its scales gone, its wings were more translucent than iridescent blue. Perhaps it had a close call with a predator, the wind had tossed it around, or it simply was old. In any case, it was damaged goods and no longer beautiful.
As we continued our brief study on prayer, one person shared that his prayer frequently is for patience. Agreeing, I admitted often praying, “Lord, please give me patience…and give it to me now!” While patience is a fruit of the Spirit, I have a problem getting it to grow in the garden of my life.
As we came together in worship, each of us bringing the Lord our own private sins, sorrows, doubts, and fears, the hymn’s words, “Just as I am… I come, I come,” seemed a fitting way to start the service. Because its heartfelt words are so relatable, Just as I Am is one of my favorite hymns. Curious about its origin, I learned that its words were written by a Victorian hymn writer named Charlotte Elliott. The daughter of an evangelist, she suffered a serious illness at the age of 32 that left her an invalid for the rest of her life. Angry about what she perceived as uselessness because of her disability, Elliott became severely depressed and spiritually lost. After a visiting minister counseled her to come to Jesus, she asked how she could come to Him when all she had was her anger, sadness, questions, and broken body. The clergyman’s response was simple: “Come to Him just as you are.” Although she gave her life to Christ at that time, she continued to be plagued by depression.
Devotions of the Heart 