At the king’s command they removed from the quarry large blocks of high-grade stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple.
1 Kings 5:17 (NIV)

This chapter-a-day journey has been trekking through the Great Story for over 20 years now. One of the things I’ve recognized along the journey is that while one chapter a day makes things simple, it’s also easy for me to miss the flow of the narrative from day to day. I get myopically focused on each chapter and miss how it may fit into the context of the whole. Sometimes it matters.

Today’s chapter looks at first like a boring chapter of lumber orders, labor contracts, and logistics—the equivalent of reading a construction manager’s Monday-morning spreadsheet. But there’s quite a lot humming underneath it. And it’s the culmination of the story that the narrator has been building.

Chapter 3 –> Solomon asks for a “listening heart.”
Chapter 4 –> God grants Solomon great wisdom.
Chapter 5 –> Solomon begins to build the Temple.

God grants Solomon wisdom, and he uses that wisdom to build something for God. This alone begs the question, what am I building with what God has built in me?

Into the chapter, the narrator places a couple of interesting tidbits that are easily overlooked.

“King Solomon conscripted laborers from all Israel—thirty thousand men.” (vs. 13)

Solomon didn’t ask for workers. He conscripted them. No choice. Forced labor. Not foreigners or defeated enemies, either. His own people. All the way back in the early chapters of 1 Samuel when the people begged for a king, Samuel warned them that a King would take what he wanted – including sons and daughters. Solomon is laying the foundation for the Temple. Yet, in doing so, the narrator is revealing that there are already cracks in the foundation of the kingdom that will become incredibly important as the story unfolds.

“At the king’s command they removed from the quarry large blocks of high-grade stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple.”

The stones are being prepared before they arrive at the Temple site. The stones were dressed at the quarry so that no hammer, chisel, or iron tool was heard at the Temple during construction. There’s something almost sacramental about this image. Far from Jerusalem—in dusty quarries where nobody is watching—stones are being hammered, cut, shaped, and prepared. Only later does anyone see what they were being prepared for.

Underneath the cedar sawdust and chiseled stone of today’s rather boring construction plans, I once again find spiritual flow from the previous few chapters.

Listening –> Wisdom –> Building

God doesn’t give wisdom merely so that I might know more. He gives wisdom so that I might build well.

Build a marriage.
Build a family.
Build a business.
Build friendships.
Build a local gathering of Jesus’ followers.
Build a community.

Build things that will still be standing after I’ve left the construction site.

Sometimes God’s work in my life has happened like those foundation stones getting dressed in the quarry. I’ve spent seasons of this life journey in the quarry wondering why life is pounding the hell out of me. Getting hammered, chiseled, shaped and smoothed. It definitely didn’t feel comfortable, nor did it look like anything particularly sacred. Then one day further down life’s road God placed me somewhere and I suddenly realized, “Oh! This is what you were shaping me for!”

But I also can’t forget the warning whispered underneath Solomon’s magnificent project. I can build something for God while simultaneously building something unhealthy in myself. Solomon is constructing the Temple while beginning to employ the royal practices Samuel warned against. His wisdom is genuine. His calling is genuine. The Temple is genuine. And so are the cracks.

And in the quiet this morning, this leaves me with two questions from today’s chapter.

First, “What am I building with the wisdom God has given me?“

And then the more uncomfortable one: “What is being built in me while I’m busy building it?“

What is being built in me while I’m busy building it?

Because God has always cared about both. The Temple matters, but so does the stone.

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