Treasured Time

Saturday night/Sunday morning, May 4-5:  Emma had been cat sitting during the day on Saturday, so she was unable to join us with the cousins. When I dropped Kaity back off to her house at around 8PM, Emma was ready to spend the night over here. 

We've been doing our Bible study on the kings and prophets for quite awhile now. We did lesson 15 last night. We had a really thorough study about king Solomon and what happened to him when he decided to take a definite WRONG turn.

We learned that Solomon married 700 royal women from the countries Israel was forbidden to intermarry with, and these women "led Solomon astray," in exactly the way God had warned about in Deuteronomy and Judges, etc. But Solomon disregarded God's commands and held on to these women in love. He ended up worshiping their detestable gods, some of whom were very vile and involved human sacrifices. Solomon made sacrificial altars to these gods on the Mt. of Olives, right across from the glorious temple of the only living God. God had HAND-WRITTEN the floor plans to the temple and given them to Solomon! God had appeared 2x to Solomon. God's glory had FILLED the temple, VISIBLY, when it was dedicated. How COULD Solomon turn away from God? This is such a sad story.

Solomon wrote THREE books of the Bible: Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs! We spent some time looking at key verses from Ecclesiastes last night. Solomon concluded that life was "meaningless". He said everything was empty. He was frustrated with wisdom. Everything was a waste. He had some very wise conclusions, though: "Fear God, and keep HIS COMMANDS" and do this while you are young! No wonder, though, that Solomon found life empty. He had discarded the God who created him, and followed false gods made by man. 

At church this morning, our worship and the teaching was about HOW GREAT OUR GOD IS! AND, how futile and empty it is to worship anyone but Him! It fit in very well with our study of poor Solomon, who died at age 58. Instead of serving and being faithful to the God of heaven, Solomon chose 700 women and their gods. No wonder he concluded that life was empty. Please, Lord, keep us from the sins of Solomon!

After church, Emma and I ate a meal and then we went shopping for a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding! Emma is coming with me! We found a very cute dress at Target! Yes!