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

Solomon rode the wave of altruism to reach the crest of wealth and greatness; but he started a nosedive the moment he shifted his attention from seeking common good to pursuing personal pleasures. His preoccupation with hedonistic indulgence cost him his exalted 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, Solomon succumbed to egotism: an obsessive preoccupation with the self. He started tending to himself, rather than the people he was raised to serve. He began to indulge his eyes and whimsical desires, accumulating wives and concubines to the thousand mark.

He forsook his mother’s advice not to dissipate his strength on women, an act that destroys kings (Proverbs 31:2). He disregarded his father’s passionate appeal to walk in ways of God and keep His statutes (1 Kings 2:3). Then he started losing his grip on things and he became a tyrant, oppressing the people he was blessed 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 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 deserved, 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. There was no profit under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). May we not end like him.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

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