- I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. -
Have you guys ever read the descriptions of Solomon’s homes? Pull over Chip and Joanna Gaines.
That joke was for my wife. Yes, I had to google their names.
Okay, enough of that! Back to the Bible.
Solomon will list in the next couple of verses different pursuits he explored to find meaning within them. The punchline? All of them were vanity.
First on the list is something I’m sure many of us take pride in.
The stuff we do.
This probably best translates to your career. Strangely, this is how people mostly want to categorize you.
Hey, nice to meet you, Debbie. What do you do?
Nothing wrong with this, despite its limitations. You spend a lot of your time working for bread just like every other human being who has ever lived.
If it absorbs most of your waking hours, then it’s a useful definition.
It’s still just a slice of you, and for most of us, the least interesting piece of our lives.
Hey, a lot of what is productive and useful is boring. Farming? Yeah, that’s the career that watches plants grow. Still super important!
Now, Solomon was a king, which meant he had to do something useful and productive with all the taxes coming in. One of the avenues he directed that money was in building houses and vineyards.
We don’t have perfect insight into who these houses were built for, but I assume that they were for Solomon, including all his servants and family.
The vineyards? Not only could this be for wine, which might be necessary depending on your water quality, but it could also be used as a thriving industry, one to trade with and provide employment.
Businesses provide an obvious social good for the community they exist in. Whether the people who worked these vineyards got paid or were indentured servants, its existence did mean less suffering occurred for their families.
Let’s go back to the houses. When you can, go read about Solomon’s palace he built in 1 Kings chapter 7.
This is an argument I can’t do justice here, but it strangely doesn’t require a lot of proof. In any society, there’s an inherent value within a beautiful building.
You know this if you’ve ever stood in a cathedral. It’s built to invoke awe, not just shelter.
It’s the same experience when you go to the Lincoln Memorial, the Taj Mahal, or the Trevi Fountain.
They’re places of beauty, an amazing collection of symmetry, color, and pattern all arranged to strike at a significance buried deep in your soul.
In short, Solomon’s houses not only were refuge, but they also reminded man of the beauty found in this world.
Think about the pride you could have in an accomplishment of that magnitude. A man who provides both sustenance and magnificence to a country!
The end of it all? Vanity. It’s empty. It’s a palace meant to become sand, unless it helps us glimpse eternity and the trinity.
Are you happy using your time for vain pursuits? Do they provide peace?
Give God room to accomplish kingdom works in your life.
Oh and wise too!
PS I think you’re funny!!