Solomon rebuilt the villages that Hiram had given him, and settled
Israelites in them.
Leaks in the ceiling, carpenter’s ants eating our walls, moisture-damaged
vinyl tiles, rowdy kids in the neighborhood, ‘Anything else?’ was my stubborn
complaint yesterday morning. I wish it was just some waking on the wrong side
of the bed, or having a bad hair day, but this one? It brought me slouching in
the corner, crying ‘I want out!’. This
house was supposed to be our transition place. I agreed because of the
statement, ‘while we’re adjusting to the city and ‘til we’ve identified the
best where to stay here’. After a year
and seven months, I declared, it’s time to call it quits.
In 1 Kings 9, we’d find Solomon giving Hiram, king of Tyre, twenty towns
in Galilee because the latter supplied him with all the cedar and pine and gold
he wanted for his building projects. But when Hiram saw the towns, he was not
pleased and called it ‘Cabul’ or good-for-nothing. Scholars say it was because
these towns were not suitable for Tyre’s maritime industry, or in other words, not
profitable to him. So here in 2 Chronicles, it noted that Hiram gave the
villages back to Solomon. With a lot other good lands to attend to, we’d think
that wise king would likewise brush the unpromising towns aside. But he did
not. We can’t be sure if t’was really his next project after the grand temple
and his own palace, but why it was first mentioned here cannot be ignored. He
saw something in these towns for him to rebuild it. And the very fact that he
called in Israelites to settle there, and not foreign slaves, meant he found
the towns special. Then reading again: Galilee? Oh, this is definitely not some
plain coincidence.
So imagine me crying discontent in the morning and being given this passage
by lunchtime. If you’re not a believer, I don’t know what else you’d call it.
It was undeniably God speaking to His child. It is He seeing what I’m going
through, feeling it, and helping me go through it. It may not be how theologians
would want us to interpret it, but here’s what I heard God say: ‘Why do you
think I chose to spend my thirty years Galilee? It may be good-for-nothing for
kings, poor, and sickness-stricken when I first stepped in, but did you see
what changed after I left? Was it
economy or structure? Isn’t changed lives far better than all these?’ And so I
had a good clean up all afternoon yesterday. Full house scrubbing, and heart’s
too. And yes, we’re staying, until God says go.
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