A Late Awakening

[Darryl Thompson]

-----------------------------------------------------------
Ellen G. White Estate, Devotional for July 16
Visit us at http://www.whiteestate.org
-----------------------------------------------------------

A Late Awakening

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought,
and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold,
all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no
profit under the sun. Eccl. 2:11.

By his own bitter experience, Solomon learned the emptiness
of a life that seeks in earthly things its highest good. He
erected altars to heathen gods, only to learn how vain is
their promise of rest to the spirit. Gloomy and
soul-harassing thoughts troubled him night and day. For him
there was no longer any joy of life or peace of mind, and
the future was dark with despair.
Yet the Lord forsook him not. By messages of reproof and by
severe judgments, He sought to arouse the king to a
realization of the sinfulness of his course. . . . At last
the Lord, through a prophet, delivered to Solomon the
startling message: . . . “I will surely rend the kingdom
from thee, and will give it to thy servant. Notwithstanding
in thy days I will not do it for David thy father’s sake:
but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.”

Awakened as from a dream by this sentence of judgment
pronounced against him and his house, Solomon with
quickened conscience began to see his folly in its true
light. Chastened in spirit, with mind and body enfeebled,
he turned wearied and thirsting from earth’s broken
cisterns, to drink once more at the fountain of life. . . .
He could never hope to escape the blasting results of sin;
he could never free his mind from all remembrance of the
self-indulgent course he had been pursuing; but he would
endeavor earnestly to dissuade others from following after
folly. . . . 

The true penitent does not put his past sins from his
remembrance. He does not, as soon as he has obtained peace,
grow unconcerned in regard to the mistakes he has made. He
thinks of those who have been led into evil by his course,
and tries in every possible way to lead them back into the
true path. The clearer the light that he has entered into,
the stronger is his desire to set the feet of others in the
right way.

>From Devotional: Our Father Cares, p. 183.