Song of Solomon Word Cloud
Proverbs Word Cloud
Ecclesiastes Word Cloud
I love these word clouds and the whole idea of a word cloud. I imagine God surrounded by a word cloud of our prayers with the most frequently prayed for items looming large. According to Wikipedia a word cloud is "a visualization of word frequency in a given text as a weighted list." [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud ]
I found a site where there are word clouds for all 66 books of the Bible. It's fascinating and beautiful to me. But then I'm a word guy.
Do you think there is a book in the Bible written by anyone who won't be in heaven? What about Solomon? He writes a psalm, the books of Proverbs, Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes, it appears, is written toward the end of his life, recording what he has learned during the journey. This is a man whose fall is the reason the kingdom of Israel will be divided. 1 Kings records that:
"As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God.... He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord...." 1 Kings 11:4-5
Wow, pretty strong stuff. Would God save a soul that also followed "Molech the detestable god"? Solomon didn't follow Yahweh fully. He added others to his wardrobe of deities. Did Mr. Wise Guy just think - "no harm, no foul" - as long as God was in his personal playlist of divine beings? I don't know. But, if my sense of the timing is correct, he goes on to write Ecclesiastes and it's added to the Bible. So will Solomon, the wisest man of all-time, the Bible author, be in heaven?
How unlike us is he who worshiped other gods as well as the one true God? We worship the Lord but don't we have other things we worship? Chiefly money and material blessings. But also status, love and being in love? What about entertainment? Aren't our loyalties divided, too? We say God comes first but then our spending habits and our allocation of time might suggest otherwise.
Solomon gives me hope. He was punished in this life for his broad, open-minded, even political correct acceptance of many gods. He was wise but reading Ecclesiastes seems to indicate his life was without real joy. Proverbs might suggest he had contentious wives to deal with. But his words are recorded in the Book of Life. And I find it hard to believe that one of our important Bible authors will not be in heaven. This, of course, is all my conjecture and not gospel. And it's not to say we shouldn't work to put away our false idols and foreign gods.
But I am continually amazed by the grace of our God. Lord forgive us and save us.
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