2 Chronicles 9:1. "Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon she came to Jerusalem to test him with hard questions ... When she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind."

I wrote about this encounter between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in Impressing the Queen of Sheba. Today what is striking me is that the queen not only asked hard questions of Solomon, she also "told him everything that was on her mind."

Aren't we all in search of someone to whom we can pose the hard questions, and tell everything that is on our minds? So many questions swirl around in our heads. We try to find the answers, but it often seems that no one has them, even the "experts" just seem to repeat conventional wisdom, which falls short (or we wouldn't have the questions in the first place!). I see this with the advent of AI, as well. It is only helpful for questions we could have found the answers to ourselves, not for the deep ones. It can't think, it can only repeat answers humans have found, and there are a lot of questions that remain unanswered!)

I often find that others do not even have the same questions that I do, and are not really interested in the answers to my questions (and sometimes get very angry at my asking them, which is a new phenomenon for me!). So many people seem willing to skirt around the complexities and mysteries of life, accepting conventional wisdom as the ultimate answer, even when reality doesn't fit into its tidy box.

This can be such a lonely and jarring feeling, so I understand why the Queen of Sheba, who obviously was a thinker, came all the way to Jerusalem to meet with Solomon. A wise man willing to listen, think, converse with, and answer her was worth the trip!