Wearing sackcloth around their waists and ropes around their heads, they went to the king of Israel and said, “Your servant Ben-Hadad says: ‘Please let me live.’” The king answered, “Is he still alive? He is my brother.” – 1 Kings 20:32

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 30, 2013): 1 Kings 20

Samuel Pierpont Langley at the turn of the 20^th century had the inside track on discovering the secret for powered, heavier than air flight. He had everything that was considered necessary to make the discovery. He had the money – he had been paid by the military for his efforts toward the discovery of flight. He had the best university trained minds available to focus on the task of the discovery (and purchased with the military money.) And he had all of the publicity that he needed – the press followed him absolutely everywhere that he went. The Wright brothers had none of the advantages of Langley. They had no money; the expenses for their experiments were paid for by the bicycle shop that they ran. Not one of the Wright team had a university education – including the Wright’s themselves. And the media generally ignored them. In fact, on the day that the Wright’s were successful, there was no one around to see the triumph. So what allowed the Wright’s to succeed where Langley could not. That subject has been debated ever since December 17,1903, but I think that part of the solution to the mystery is the different attitude between the two inventors. For Langley, the process seemed to be all about fame and fortune, but for the Wright’s it was a simple curiosity about the way that things worked. So it should not be a big surprise that the day after the Wright’s succeeded, Langley quit rather than trying to improve on the Wright’s invention.

So much about life is really about the motives that we have when we do things. So many of the excuses we 

make for our own behavior are because we refuse to examine our own motives for our actions. So after the war between Ahab and Ben-Hadad, Ben-Hadad’s attitude has completely reversed. Instead of demanding everything that Ahab had, now he pleads for his own life. Ben-Hadad’s motives are understandable – he is doing anything he can to survive. But to modern ears, Ahab’s response seems to be magnanimous. He seems to completely forgive his former opponent. And yet Ahab’s motive for the gesture is totally for the wrong reason. Two opposite emotions seem to be at work in the King of Judah. The first is a sense of pride. Ahab believes that he has won the war, when the battle had actually been fought by the God that Ahab had tried so hard to ignore. But the second emotion was fear. He gave an incredible honor to Ben-Hadad because he did not trust his own abilities to be able to fight the battle again - or he was afraid of the price that God would ask of him. Ahab would rather welcome his enemy into his chariot rather than be dependent on God.

No matter what the accomplishments of your life may be, it is the attitude that is behind the accomplishments that really matters. Major accomplishments completed with wrong motives are still failures – and failures that will carry our lives in wrong directions, allowing us to be less than we were designed to be. That was a lesson that Ahab never did learn – and that Langley learned late in life.   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 21