READING: 1 Kings 21-22
It’s likely that all of us at times respond more with immaturity than maturity. Our emotions get the best of us. Our covetous desires grab us. Getting what we want matters more than anything. Discontentment captures us. Even if the immaturity is only briefly evident, it’s still there in our hearts.
In today’s reading, we see childish immaturity at a level that seems extreme. King Ahab desired Naboth’s vineyard—and he even offered to pay for it—but Naboth would not break the Law by giving up his ancestral land. Ahab was so distraught that he “lay down on his bed, turned his face away, and didn’t eat any food” (1 Kgs 21:4). He lay on the bed, sulking, brooding, pouting, overwhelmed with emotion and perhaps wanting others to see his grief and do something about it.
Matthew Henry summarizes Ahab’s sin in a way that challenges me today: “Discontent is a sin that is its own punishment and makes men torment themselves; it makes the spirit sad, the body sick, and all the enjoyments sour; it is the heaviness of the heart and the rottenness of the bones.”* May God help me to find my contentment solely in Him today!
PERSONAL REFLECTION: Do you find your contentment in Christ today?
DAILY PRAYER: “God, forgive me when I am discontent even though You are with me.”
TOMORROW’S READING: 2 Kings 1-4
*Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume(p. 516). Hendrickson.