How Not to Lose It All: Learning from King Solomon (2)

Today’s meditation shall be the conclusion of the lessons we can learn from King Solomon about how not to lose it all after attaining the heights of glory.

So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure…
– Ecclesiastes 2:9-10

King Solomon rode the wave of altruism to reach the crest of wealth and greatness, but he started to nosedive when he shifted his attention from seeking the common good to pursuing personal pleasures. His preoccupation with hedonistic indulgence cost him his high estimation in the eyes of God; therefore, he lost the throne and ended up with a bitter taste rather than enjoyment of all the resources he had, to the point that he summed them all as vanity!

According to the passage above, at the peak of his greatness, King Solomon succumbed to egotism: an obsessive preoccupation with the self. He started tending to himself, rather than the people he was promoted to serve. He began to indulge his eyes and whimsical desires, accumulating wives and concubines to the thousand marks.

He forsook his mother’s advice not to dissipate his strength on women, an act that leads to the downfall of rulers (Proverbs 31:2). He disregarded his father’s passionate appeal to walk in the ways of God and keep His statutes (1 Kings 2:3). Therefore, he started losing his grip and he became a tyrant, oppressing the people he was raised to serve. That was why after his death the Israelites came to his son and requested, “Your father made our yoke heavy; now therefore, lighten the burdensome service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you” (1 Kings 12:4).

He started so well but he ended on a sorry note. By the time God dealt with him, he lost the taste of pleasure he so much wanted and the sense of accomplishment he used to have, only having this to say: “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed, all was vanity and grasping for the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

The lesson here is that it is important to keep your focus in prosperity. Success has its own brand of distractions. Therefore, you will do well not to allow those to derail you. As you start to attain prominence and make a name for yourself, never forget the values that earned you success in the first place. Ensure that you stay true to them and do not let the deceitfulness of riches get you thinking that you need to change circle or mix with another group therefore forgetting where you are coming from or even forgetting those values that have served you so well in the past.

This was what proved King Solomon’s undoing. Although. he started as an unassuming young ruler; he soon became a self-seeking persona in success and started doing things just to please himself without much thought about what pleased God. He ended on a regrettable note.

May you not end like him.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

Also read:

• How Not to Lose It All: Learning from King Solomon (1)
• I Carry A Cross in My Pocket
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