44 000 minis

Today I’m skipping a creative introduction because ultimately I can’t find an anecdote or story fitting to the idea I want to write about. My question for us all is this: how far would you go to honour God? One of my favourite quotes is from a guy called Louie Giglio and it is simply this, ‘passion is how far you are willing to go to reach your goal’. So how passionate are you about loving the Lord with ‘all your heart, soul, strength and mind’?

I ask this not so much as a challenge to you but as an extension of a question I am asking myself a lot at the moment. I’ve been asking it ever since I read the account in 1 Kings 6 of the temple that Solomon built for the Lord to dwell. If you haven’t read it then do. It’s an entire chapter devoted to describing, with architectural detail and artistic license, how Solomon used 4,000 tonnes of gold, 40,000 tonnes of silver and countless amounts of bronze iron and stone, over a period seven years and commissioning the land’s most skilled craftsmen and sculptors, on a new temple for the Lord (1 Chronicles 22). Just think about that for a moment. A mini weighs about a tonne. Now imagine 4,000 minis of gold, 40,000 minis of silver, and so many minis of bronze, iron and stone and you can’t count them. All smelted and used to build a single magnificent building. Wow. That’s a lot to give in one go. A lot to give to give on one building. A lot to give to honour God. Or is it?

Well, is it? My brain says it is. My brain that says nothing is really worth that outlay. But what does that say about my perception and value of God? Surely loving God with all my heart, soul, strength and mind means putting it all on the line? As I read Solomon’s immense action, an act showing tremendous staying power and commitment as it took so long, I began to ask what I really do give to honour my Lord? In the same way that Solomon was building an earthly temple worthy of the Lord’s presence, what am I doing to my temple where the Lord dwells, that is my body and my life (1 Corinthians 3.16-17; 6.19), to make in honourable to Him?

Am I spending my wealth on the temple? I might not have the same quantities as Solomon did but Jesus himself said giving was about the heart not the sound of the ‘clink’ in the offering (Mark 12.41-44). Do I just prefer to spend and build elsewhere?

And do I make a real commitment to building plans? Solomon set aside seven full years (or more likely as long as it took). Do I have such longevity or do I begin plans to pray more, or study more, or meet up with an accountability partner more, only to fail under the pressure of time and other burdens. Do I leave parts of my life unfinished, ‘half-honourable’ to the Lord?

And what about the tools and methods I use to build an honourable life? Am I hiring the cheapest labourers around; the quick route to my goal if you like, or am I looking for the best and most successful ways, often the hardest paths, to improve those things in my life that aren’t quite so honourable to He who in dwells?

When matched up to Solomon I fall pitifully short.