We can’t take our riches with us.

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Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness! The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what good is wealth—except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers! ... There is another serious problem I have seen under the sun. Hoarding riches harms the saver. Money is put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost. In the end, there is nothing left to pass on to one’s children. We all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We can’t take our riches with us. -Ecclesiastes 5:10-11,13-15 NLT

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I once heard that the bible speaks more about money that it does anything else. Not sure that it is true but it does seem that Solomon speaks about it quite a bit. Here he speaks as one who was probably one the richest men of all time. This king, who had wealth beyond measure, writes about money not being enough, hoarding riches, risky investments and how we are all the same in the end. I think that he had a perspective that few of us will ever have.

In contrast to the opulence of wealth is the contentment that we hear that people have in foreign lands. Many who come back from third world countries often regale us with stories of happy people who have no wealth. As Solomon puts it: "How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!" Yet how many of us know this but refuse to be content with what we have? Perhaps the secret to this sort of contentment is simply acknowledging our blessedness?

Forgive us Lord for all of the ways that we love money and the things that money buys. Help us to be content.

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