The Amish Voice 3
that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vine-
yard, which was in Jezreel…
And *King+ Ahab spake unto Naboth,
saying, Give me thy vineyard, that I may
have it for a garden of herbs, because it
is near unto my house: and I will give
thee for it a beter vineyard than it; or,
if it seem good to thee, I will give thee
the worth of it in money.
And Naboth said to Ahab, The LORD
forbid it me, that I should give the in-
heritance of my fathers unto thee.
And Ahab came into his house heavy
and displeased because of the word
which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken
to him: for he had said, I will not give
thee the inheritance of my fathers. And
he laid him down upon his bed, and
turned away his face, and would eat no
bread.
Wow! What a silly story! Have you ever
heard of such a miserable story? The King
did not get the ONE THING he wanted. So
what does he do—he lays on the bed, buries
his face in his pillow and refuses to eat.
Wouldn’t you agree, most children, if they
acted like this, would have received a spank-
ing and been told to grow up.
You may also be thinking along the lines that
I am—“how in the world did such a big baby
ever become a king?”
But the story does not stop there. As you
will see here in a minute, because the King
was not able to get his mind of the ONE
THING, it caused other innocent lives to be
hurt forever.
We are told in verse 5 that his wife Jezebel
came into the bedroom and asked the king,
“Why is thy spirit so sad, that thou eatest no
bread?”
The king replied to her,
“because Naboth
refuses to give me his vineyard—I tried to
pay him money and he stll refuses. I also
tried to exchange a vineyard with him and
he contnues to refuse to give in”
His wife, Jezebel, said to him, don’t you wor-
ry, I will get you that vineyard. And in verse
9-12, we are told that Naboth was set up to
look as if he blasphemed against God and
the king. And in the end, he was stoned to
death. Yes! Killed because the king could
not get his mind of the
ONE THING
.
The Bible says in chapter 21:16, And it
came to pass, when Ahab heard that
Naboth was dead, that Ahab rose up to
go down to the vineyard of Naboth the
Jezreelite, to take possession of it.
Before we say too much, let’s take a few
minutes and look into our own life. How
many tmes have we done something similar
to what the king did? Oh, maybe not to this
extent, but … Sure we have! Probably more
ofen than we would want to believe. And
when we do get so focused on the
ONE
THING
in our life, we hardly ever hurt just
ourselves, we also hurt our loved ones who
are totally innocent by-standers.
————————————
Ok, let’s shif gears here and look at some
other stories in the Old Testament where
certain people became so focused on ONE
THING that it got them and many others in
trouble.
For instance, think about Samson. Samson
was a strong man who was born for the very
purpose of delivering the Israelites from the
Philistnes. And we are told in the Bible that
in order for Samson to become strong, and
stay that way, he could never cut his hair,
touch a dead body or drink of the vine.
Samson grew into adulthood and eventually
we get to the saddest part of Samson’s life.
It’s the part where Samson laid eyes on a
Philistne woman one day and from thereon
he could NOT get his mind of of her. All he
could think about was the
ONE THING
he
wanted more than anything else in life.
In Judges 14:2 we are told that Samson
came to his father and mother and told
them what he had in mind:
And he came up, and told his father
and his mother, and said, I have seen a
woman in Timnath of the daughters of
the Philistnes: now therefore get her
for me to wife.
When his parents heard about the woman,
they warned him NOT to marry her but he
would not listen.
You see, Samson was in the very same pre-
dicament that King Ahab was —all he could
think of was how beautful she looked and
how badly he wanted to be her husband.
Long story short, the day came when his
Philistne wife
answered
Samson’s
riddle, and
that in turn,
led her to
cut his hair.
And from
that mo-
ment on,
Samson lost all
his strength and his eyes were eventually
cut out. But that is not all the pain and
sufering it brought; as a result of his marry-
ing into the Philistne religion, many inno-
cent lives sufered and died.
I can’t help but wonder, had Samson known
the outcome, would he have been able to
let go of the
ONE THING
on his mind?
————————————
Is there something in your life that you are
hanging onto? Possibly, your most trusted
friends have informed you that you need to
let go and move on, but you have told your-
self, I can’t.
You have told yourself over and over again
that nothing else in life really maters except
the
ONE THING
you are hanging onto. And
you are willing to lose friends and family
members, if that is what it takes. In fact,
you have told yourself, “I will do whatever
and anything that is necessary to NOT let go
of it.”
Well it is quite possible that you may very
well regret not letng go, partcularly if your
family and friends have advised you to do
so.
————————————
Let’s look at another story in the Bible that
goes right along with the stories of King
Ahab and Samson. It’s the story about Ad-
am and Eve.