June 22-28

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This week, we get to learn a bit about Solomon’s reign. Solomon was known for his wisdom, a spiritual gift that was the direct result of a request he made as he was ascending the throne. The story of the two women and the baby is well-known and highlights this wisdom.

In the last post, we talked about how the Lord reflected Solomon’s heart back to him when the Lord offered to answer a prayer for Solomon. This week, we get to read about Solomon imitating the Lord in the story with the two women. 

Here is a refresher on the story with the two women and the baby.

Two women lived in the same home. They both had babies. One woman accidentally laid on top of her child and killed the child. She snuck into the room of the other woman and switched the babies. The second woman woke up to the dead child and realized he wasn’t hers. They took their case to King Solomon. This is how King Solomon responded.

1 Kings 3:24-25

24 And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king.

25 And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. 

The lying woman wanted the child cut in half. The true mother offered to let the other woman have the son; she just wanted him to be alive. Solomon obviously gave the baby to the woman who wanted to protect the baby at all costs. 

Now, I want you to imagine being the true mother of the child who found herself in this nightmare through no fault of her own.

I don’t know exactly what she was feeling, but I think my response to this wild suggestion from the king would be this: “What?! I thought this guy was wise! Why would he do this? Is he crazy?”

I think this is sometimes how we react when the Lord makes decisions in our lives as well.

Sometimes the Lord sends or allows trials to happen in our lives. Sometimes we respond with, “What?! I thought the Lord was wise! Why would He do this?” 

Throughout my life, and especially while working through sharing my testimony online, I have received this testimony over and over and over: The Lord loves me and works very carefully as He makes decisions to interfere in my life. He is wise! He knows what He’s doing! I know this testimony. I believe it. I find a lot of comfort in it.

And yet, even though I already had a testimony of this fact, I’ve found that there were limits to this testimony that needed to be expanded. When certain events have cropped up in my life, such as getting pregnant three months after having a baby, I have tried to trust in that growing testimony that the Lord loves me and is trying to give me the best of what mortality actually has to offer. Despite my desire to trust that He was trying to do what was best for me, I simply felt scared and betrayed and powerless. 

I’m sure that woman was terrified when Solomon made the crazy suggestion to cut the baby in half. He was a king, and she was a harlot. I’m sure she knew what it meant to feel powerless and to have someone making decisions regardless of what was best for her. 

And yet, Solomon wasn’t trying to torture her. He had very specific purposes. He was not rash or ridiculous. He was intentional. He was a mortal man blessed with wisdom to discern what was going on in his kingdom. He “sent a trial,” and it revealed the hearts of the women he was judging.

The Lord already knows our hearts, but He still sends little tests in mortality. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that He isn’t testing our hearts for His own sake, but for our’s. We spoke about this in my last post as well: He reflects our own hearts back to us. 

Solomon actually needed to see the reflection of the hearts of the women so he could judge well. He was wise, but he did not know these women perfectly. He needed a way of seeing their hearts. 

The Lord’s purposes are slightly different, but His methods are similar. His purpose is showing us our own hearts. Sometimes that means sending or allowing trials that allow the deepest parts of our heart to go on display. It highlights the boundaries of what we truly know and feel and desire. It gives us opportunities to expand those boundaries. 

Going back to my example of getting pregnant so quickly, I felt incredibly betrayed by God. I am so miserable when I’m pregnant, and now I was going to be in that dark state of mind for 18 months with very little reprieve (honestly, with no reprieve since my body and mind still hadn’t completely recovered in between babies). I thought I had a testimony that the Lord loved me, and I did. But apparently there were limits to that testimony. This specific experience showed me the boundaries of my own testimony. It brought my heart right up to the surface where I could look at it very clearly. I then had the opportunity to work through those experiences and expand those boundaries. 

Despite the fact that this woman likely thought King Solomon was out of his mind, I would guess that she felt differently after the experience. Despite the initial fear and distress it caused her, she gained a testimony that Solomon acted with purpose. By the end of this, she knew that Solomon wasn’t crazy. He was trying to be a good king and make sure that baby went back to its rightful mother. 

Surely, the experiment could have gone poorly. What if both mothers had pled for the life of the baby? Yes, it could have failed, but this story is a parable. Even if Solomon’s experiments fail, the Lord’s “experiments” never have to. Solomon was a mortal man. The Lord has much more to offer in the way of helping us discern the boundaries of the testimonies that will carry us and help us get where we need to go. The Lord also has the ultimate power of delivering what will be best for us. Even when He sends or allows dark times, He has the power to help those difficult times become sacred experiences.

I testify that the Lord loves us. I testify He knows what He’s doing. I testify that He already knows our hearts, but like Solomon, He sends and allows trials that bring our very essence up to the surface where it’s noticeable. We get to find the holes and limitations of our testimonies, and in turn, we can fill the holes and broaden the boundaries until we are fully protected and constantly uplifted by them.