2 Chronicles 8:7-11: a reflection

7As for all the people who were left of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of Israel— 8of their children who were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel didn’t consume—of them Solomon conscripted forced labor to this day. 9But of the children of Israel, Solomon made no servants for his work, but they were men of war, chief of his captains, and rulers of his chariots and of his horsemen. 10These were the chief officers of King Solomon, even two-hundred fifty, who ruled over the people. 11Solomon brought up Pharaoh’s daughter out of David’s city to the house that he had built for her; for he said, “My wife shall not dwell in the house of David king of Israel, because the places where the LORD’s ark has come are holy.”

Amid the account of Solomon's building projects sits a small, revealing decision. He moves his wife, Pharaoh's daughter, out of the part of the city associated with David, giving his reason: my wife shall not live in the house of David king of Israel, because the places to which the ark of the LORD has come are holy. Solomon recognized that certain places, touched by the presence of God, were set apart, holy, not to be treated as ordinary ground.

Notice the instinct at work, whatever we make of Solomon's later compromises: a sense that some things are holy, that God's presence sanctifies, and that what is holy should be treated differently from the common. Solomon would not simply mix the sacred and the ordinary as though there were no difference. He drew a line around the holy and honored it.

That instinct is worth recovering in a casual age that treats little as sacred. We can lose the sense that anything is holy, set apart, deserving of reverence, flattening everything into the ordinary. But God is holy, and the things that carry his presence, his word, his worship, his people, his name, are not to be handled carelessly. Where have you grown casual with something holy? Recover a little of Solomon's instinct: to recognize what God has set apart, and to treat the holy as holy.

Lord, in a casual age I can lose the sense that anything is holy. Recover in me a reverence for what you have set apart, your word, your worship, your name, your presence. Keep me from handling the holy carelessly, and teach me to treat as holy what you have made holy.