1 Kings 3:7-15
"Now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?
The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, "Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have you asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for-both riches and honor-so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you long life."

Atheism

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then then my argument against God collapsed too-for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist-in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless-I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality-namely my idea of justice-was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that is has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

-C.S. Lewis

Happy, I find myself inspired in this classical setting;

The ancient world and the present speak so clearly and evocatively to me.

Here I follow the advice to page through the works of the ancients,

With busy hands and daily with renewed joy.

Ah, but throughout the nights, Amor occupies me with other matters.

And if I wind up only half a scholar, I am yet doubly happy.

But do I not provide my own instruction, when I inspect the form

Of her lovely breasts, and guide my hands down her thighs?

Then I understand the marble aright for the first time: I think and compare,

And see with feeling eye, and feel with seeing hand.

Though my beloved steals from me a few hours of the day,

She grants me in recompense hours of the night.

We don't spend all the time kissing, but have intelligent conversation;

When sleep overcomes her, I lie by her side and think over many things.

Often I have composed poetry while in her arms, and have softly beat out

The measure of hexameters, fingering along her spine.

In her lovely slumber, she breathes out, and I inspire

Her warm breath, which penetrates deep into my heart.

Amor trims the lamp and remembers the time

When he performed the same service for his three poets.

-Goethe, Römische Elegien 3.2: 47

Men go to God when he is sore bested:
find him poor and scorned, without shelter and bread,
whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead.
Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

another gem.

"It all depends on whether or not the fragment of our life reveals the plan and material of the whole. There are fragments which are only good to be thrown away, and others which are important for centuries to come because their fulfilment can only be divine work. They are fragments necessity. If our life, however remotely, reflects such a fragment ... we shall not bewail our fragmentary life, but, on the contrary, rejoice in it."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer