What Do You Wish For?

One of my favorite jokes as a kid goes like this:

There was a man walking down a beach and he saw a bottle.  He picked it up and rubbed it and a genie came out.   She said to him, "You can have three wishes!"  He thought carefully and decided to test and see if it worked.  First, he said, I'd like to have a million dollars.  Instantly he was surrounded by stacks of bills.   Desperately looking around at his situation, realizing he was on the beach in the middle of nowhere, he wished for a Maserati Gran Turismo Convertible (after all, he needed to drive the $1,000,000 in bills off the beach in style).   Sure enough it appeared right there on the beach.  He then had so many ideas for his third wish that he couldn't make a decision so he asked the genie if he could save it.   She said, sure, as soon as you're ready, say it out loud and your wish will come true.

He piles the bills into the Maserati, let the top down, turned the key and off he went down the road.  He was so elated he felt like singing, so he began singing the song that had been stuck in his head all day.  "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener......"

If you had one wish, or one request that you knew was going to be granted, what would it be.  I thought about this of and on for several hours the other day.  My first thought was a new, healthy 25 year old body.  (Wouldn't want to go any younger, because I would want my brain fully developed).  Then I thought about wishing that all of my children were financially and emotionally independent, but then that took me to the idea of it I wished to be a billionaire it wouldn't matter if they were.  But both of those wishes seemed a bit shallow.

The reason I had been asking myself that question because I was reading 1st Kings 3.  Verse 5 says:

  "At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”

Solomon replies in verse 9:

"... give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong."

And God's Response (in the Message... I like the way it reads here):

God, the Master, was delighted with Solomon’s response. And God said to him, “Because you have asked for this and haven’t grasped after a long life, or riches, or the doom of your enemies, but you have asked for the ability to lead and govern well, I’ll give you what you’ve asked for—I’m giving you a wise and mature heart. There’s never been one like you before; and there’ll be no one after. As a bonus, I’m giving you both the wealth and glory you didn’t ask for—there’s not a king anywhere who will come up to your mark."

That whole interchange is amazing.  God says, "What do you want?"  Solomon basically says, "I want the tools I need to serve you better and lead your people."  And God says, "Done.  Plus I'll give you all those things that you didn't ask for too!"

It is my prayer that my number one request of God is for wisdom to serve Him well.

The whole interchange reminds me of something that Jesus said in Matthew 6:33:

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

That's my plan.  I hope it's yours as well.