Scripture Daily

Context No. 1627 of 4322 · 1 Kings

Context · Reflection

1 Kings 3:15-21: in context

15Solomon awoke; and behold, it was a dream. Then he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the LORD’s covenant, and offered up burnt offerings, offered peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants. 16Then two women who were prostitutes came to the king, and stood before him. 17The one woman said, “Oh, my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house. I delivered a child with her in the house. 18The third day after I delivered, this woman delivered also. We were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, just us two in the house. 19This woman’s child died in the night, because she lay on it. 20She arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me while your servant slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. 21When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, he was dead; but when I had looked at him in the morning, behold, it was not my son whom I bore.”

Solomon wakes from the dream in which God granted him wisdom, and he worships, offering sacrifices before the ark and making a feast. And then, immediately, wisdom is put to the test. Two women who are prostitutes come to him with a bitter dispute: each had a baby, one baby died in the night, and now each claims the living child as her own. There is no witness, only the two women and their conflicting stories, and the king must judge. The gift of wisdom, just received, is at once confronted with a hard, messy, real-life case.

The placement is worth noticing: Solomon receives wisdom, worships, and then, without pause, a difficult and sordid case walks in the door. The gift was not given for abstract admiration or for Solomon to feel wise; it was given to be used, and it is tested at once, in a genuinely hard situation, two desperate women, a dead baby and a living one, no witnesses, competing claims. Wisdom's first task was not lofty philosophy but a wrenching custody dispute between two prostitutes. There is a pattern in this for the gifts God gives us. He does not give them for display or for our own sense of being gifted; he gives them for use, in the concrete, difficult, often messy situations of real life, and they are tested there. The wisdom, the gift, the grace God supplies is proved not in the abstract but in the hard case that walks in the door, the actual problem, the real people, the situation with no easy answer. And notice that Solomon did not shrink from the messy case; he engaged it, applied the wisdom God had given to the actual, difficult problem before him. That is what God's gifts are for. Whatever God has given us, wisdom, ability, grace, it is meant to be used in the real and difficult situations of our lives, not admired in the abstract. The gift received in the dream met the hard case in the throne room; and it was in that hard case, not in the dream, that the wisdom proved itself.

Do I treat the gifts God has given me, wisdom, ability, grace, as things to admire in the abstract, or do I use them where they are meant to be used, in the concrete, difficult, messy situations of real life that walk in my door and test what God has given?

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