Twelve years ago Byron passed away from a brain aneurism at age 22 and in medical school. Today Luis was buried in Santa Concepcion. He was nearly 19. Burying your child is never forgotten. One of our children had surgery at the Moore clinic and will be in the Ronald MacDonald house for 2 weeks. I began putting together the visitor’s team for Sebastian to review.

Duke & Jim are welding railings on the upper bunks of beds for safety.

Thom sent me this photograph from his farm in Tennessee this morning about the time Lee and I were praying here at Casa. I wonder what it looks like to Byron and Luis from the other side?

How would you like to follow David as leader of your nation? It would have been as bad as when Harry Truman followed FDR and everyone believed Harry was just a buffoon from Missouri. Bathsheba and David had another son. He was Solomon.

Remarkably God blessed Solomon with a different gifting. He made him wise. In fact, wiser than anyone who ever lived. The kingdom had to pass to Solomon because God had said in II Samuel 7:13 that the kingdom of David would never come to an end.

Solomon would extend the empire to include all of Egypt to the Euphrates River and his 40 years as king would be peaceful. There were no great conflicts or battles. Sadly Solomon became full of himself. He built monuments to himself and he taxed the people much more than either Saul or David had done.

He wrote thousands of proverbs but as often happens he goes stupid with his own importance. Isn’t it strange that when God told him he could have anything Solomon asked for wisdom? I Kings 3:5-28. At first he exercised wisdom as seen with the two women who were arguing over a dead child. They both claimed the living child was their own and the dead child belong to the other.

Solomon asks for a swordsman and said, “Divide the child in half.” Of course the real mother said “No” and Solomon knew she was the one to whom the child belonged. His wisdom had even reached the Queen of Sheba.

He could not take his own advice. He married foreign (unsaved) women and they would bring about his downfall. Again we see the sexual temptation exactly as it had been in his father David. We need to heed lest we fall.

It would be his suicide!