Be content with what you have—it’s quite a trick, isn’t it?

A vast industry exists to stop you and me from feeling content. Marketers expose us to thousands of ads a day via billboards, television, radio and the internet. Students attend universities to study advertising, sometimes called creative communication.

Advertisers hope to shape you—to influence you—to mold you into the type of person they want you to be. Do they keep the flourishing of society at the heart of their business model? Do they have your best interests at heart? Of course not. Profits make their bottom line, and our money is the means to their success.

Counter this churning with Paul’s wisdom. Writing to expose those who hoped to act godly and therefore achieve financial wealth, Paul added:

But godliness with contentment is great gain.

A simple thought running counter to a message we hear a thousand times a day, every day of the year.

Contentment never follows the purchase. Material goods wear out, fall from mind, or simply get lost in the back of a closet. The answer we’re told is to buy more and feel better. We often do feel better for a short time, but still lack contentment.

Take Paul’s word to heart. Close your computer and turn off the TV. Roll his words around in a quiet moment. Let this radical idea of contentment with godliness, of resting in the Lord and enjoying his gifts, settle into your soul.

1 Timothy 6 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez

After dramatically inaugurating worship at the new temple with fire from heaven, God appeared to Solomon in the dark of night. The Lord heard Solomon’s prayers and promised to bless, as long as Solomon remained faithful.

Even in the hardest times, the Lord reminded Solomon to not lose faith, but to turn back to God.

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

There’s no magic formula to elicit the Lord’s actions on our behalf. But in his words we see the prerequisites. First, it requires humility. All throughout the scriptures the Lord blesses the humble. The proud need not apply.

Then we see the need to pray and seek the Lord’s face, to go before the Lord on our knees. This process requires perseverance, for the Lord’s timing rarely matches our own. He’s concerned about our strength of character rather than our convenience.

Finally, the Lord demands us to turn from wicked ways. Not veer slightly, but U-turn back toward him. Repent is the old word, meaning we return to the Lord sorry for our actions and ready to change. One simply cannot continue in sin and hope for the grace of God to increase.

The Lord spoke of the newly blessed temple in Jerusalem: Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.

May the same be true of the places we worship, as we tame our haughty spirits, return from our wayward actions and seek the Lord’s face.

2 Chronicles 7 in reading the Bible cover to cover

Photo by Jonas Gerlach

Solomon owed a huge debt to King Hiram of Tyre, a neighbor and ally who supplied much of the materials Solomon used to build the temple and his palace. Along with paying vast amounts of olive oil and grain, Solomon gave Hiram land.

King Solomon gave twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, because Hiram had supplied him with all the cedar and juniper and gold he wanted.

After visiting the towns King Hiram complained, calling them worthless. As a wealthy and powerful collaborator Hiram expected a better gift.

But Hiram’s griping doesn’t interest me as much as Solomon’s willingness to give away part of his nation’s territory—a slice of the promised land. Along with the twenty towns given to Hiram went the inhabitants living there. Solomon gave a number of the Lord’s people to Hiram.

Kings apparently traded territories on the edge of their lands back and forth as part of various treaties and agreements. Better to swap land than go to war and devastate each other. But no war threatened Solomon, and he possessed plenty of material wealth to pay off Hiram. Instead, he choose to dump some lousy land off on his friend.

Shrewd politics, perhaps, but runs counter to a king fully devoted to serving the Lord and his people. No other king of Israel gave away a chunk of the promised land in peacetime. Under duress, yes, but Solomon gave his people and their land away to settle a bill he ran up as part of creating his legacy.

This vignette from Solomon’s life barely registers among his magnificent acts and marvelous failures. But to me it appears as an early example of his playing hard and loose with the sacred responsibilities of an Israeli king.

Solomon’s devotion to the Lord took a downhill turn around this time. One of the first steps in the wrong direction, of habitually shunting aside the ways of the Lord, involved pawning a few insignificant villages off on a neighbor to settle a debt.

1 Kings 9 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by Alois Komenda