by Sandy Kirby Quandt

Perhaps you’ve played the game, Trivial Pursuit, where winning is determined by a player’s ability to answer general knowledge and popular culture questions. The game’s popularity peaked in 1984, when over 20 million games were sold.

Many variations of the game exist in such places as board games, computer games, cards, and newspapers. Pie has a true knack for trivia. Ask him what the tallest building in Altamonte is, and he’s sure to tell you.

Trivial means “of little value or importance”. And while knowing obscure facts intrigues me and I love learning new things, I have enough trouble remembering the important things I need to remember, without adding those bits of information that hold little value.

At the time when Israel was divided into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, several kings played trivial pursuit of a different kind. They considered their sins trivial. Insignificant. Of little consequence or importance.

How very wrong they were.

Ahab became king of the Northern Kingdom after his father, Omri, died. About Omri the Bible says he “did evil in the eyes of the LORD and sinned more than all those before him.”

How would you like that to be your legacy?

Following in his father’s footsteps, however, the Bible says “Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him.”

Ahab considered it a trivial, insignificant thing to commit sins before God.

No matter how we sugar coat our sins and try to make them seem less wrong than someone else’s sins, all sins are against God. No sin is trivial or inconsequential. All sin must be repented of if we expect to be in the presence of a Holy God.

So. Did you play Trivial Pursuit? Do you like to discover trivial facts?

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Omri rested with his ancestors and was buried in Samaria. And Ahab his son succeeded him as king.

In the thirty-eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab son of Omri became king of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria over Israel twenty-two years. Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. 1 Kings 16:28-31

I wish you well.

Sandy

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