Many of would like to see ourselves in a place where we are able to influence a lot of people or at least the people in whom we have vested interests.   We believers have inherited God’s kingdom.  We are joint heirs with God’s one and only Son.  It is not as if we will ever lay eyes or hands on all that belongs to God, but we can at least position and prepare ourselves for the best possible experience of the inheritance. Yeshua insisted that his disciples keep putting the kingdom first.

Very few of us have had the opportunity to be left in charge of a great people. Solomon did not choose to be David’s heir and successor but the gravity of being the king of the united children  of Israel sunk in early. When invited to ask for whatever (he might need as head of the people) Solomon’s request still amazes us. He had arrived at this intersection after removing an adversary (1 Kings 2:46)

Executing the opposition

So the king commanded Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and he went out and fell upon him so that he died. Thus the kingdom was established in the hands of Solomon.

He was engaged in the traditional worship when the opportunity  came for him to choose something for himself from God’s glorious storehouse (1 Kings 3:5).

In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night; and God said, “Ask what you wish Me to give you.”

I can only encourage us to be as curious as diligent as Solomon in doing justice and following his father’s counsel and discipline.  If I urged us to be kingdom people as well as people in the ruling family I fear we would lose our grip on eternal life as surely as Solomon abandoned the ancestral pattern of faith in one true God. Then we might sharply interrogate ourselves beginning with “What faith and which deity?”.