Which One Do You Think Really Loves?

Reading about Solomon’s wisdom on display with the two prostitute mothers, I can help but realize that true love values and honors life. The mother that wanted the child to live even if that meant living with another mother, shows true love. True love promotes life. The mother whose child died wanted the other mother’s child to die as well. Do you think there’s a connection with abortion? One side values life, while the other values self over life. Which one do you think really loves? I think Solomon makes it clear here in this story. God grants him wisdom, the wisest man to ever live (according to God), so in using his wisdom, is he not displaying God’s character? If he honored the woman who truly loved her baby, enough to give it up in order to preserve life, God rewarded her by giving her baby back to her. It’s God’s priority, valuing life, it’s part of creation. When you value self over life, it only promotes a culture than will not honor God. Honor life, and God will honor you back in the form of real love. It’s that simple.

16 Some time later two prostitutes came to the king to have an argument settled. 17 “Please, my lord,” one of them began, “this woman and I live in the same house. I gave birth to a baby while she was with me in the house. 18 Three days later this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there were only two of us in the house.19 “But her baby died during the night when she rolled over on it. 20 Then she got up in the night and took my son from beside me while I was asleep. She laid her dead child in my arms and took mine to sleep beside her. 21 And in the morning when I tried to nurse my son, he was dead! But when I looked more closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn’t my son at all.”22 Then the other woman interrupted, “It certainly was your son, and the living child is mine.”“No,” the first woman said, “the living child is mine, and the dead one is yours.” And so they argued back and forth before the king.23 Then the king said, “Let’s get the facts straight. Both of you claim the living child is yours, and each says that the dead one belongs to the other. 24 All right, bring me a sword.” So a sword was brought to the king.25 Then he said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to one woman and half to the other!”26 Then the woman who was the real mother of the living child, and who loved him very much, cried out, “Oh no, my lord! Give her the child–please do not kill him!”But the other woman said, “All right, he will be neither yours nor mine; divide him between us!”27 Then the king said, “Do not kill the child, but give him to the woman who wants him to live, for she is his mother!”28 When all Israel heard the king’s decision, the people were in awe of the king, for they saw the wisdom God had given him for rendering justice. 1 Kings 3:16-28