Morning Musings: Ecclesiastes 4:6

“Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

We live in a culture in which money is everything.  Being rich is the chief end of man.  For indeed, when you are rich you are freed from the worries and burdens of the world.  You can enjoy the pleasures of life more freely and fully.  You need not fear when storms rise up.  Right???

Not even close, but the illusion here is of the most potent power there is and so we strive and toil and chase after the wind, hoping after a life most of us will never obtain.  And for what?  In the end, we are too tired to enjoy what we do have and we look on it with contempt anyway because it is not more.

This is vanity and futility and ultimately worthless.  Solomon is right.  It is better to have less and enjoy it more, than to have two hands full while yet never being able to enjoy it.  Find contentment in what you have and the life that you are living with Jesus and you will always have enough.  Serve the Lord faithfully in your present circumstances and they will always leave you satisfied.  Receive with gladness what He gives and use it faithfully, but make the getting an aim secondary to the faithfulness.

2 thoughts on “Morning Musings: Ecclesiastes 4:6

  1. Jim

    Brings a funny example to mind. A species of small monkeys are caught by the following method: holes are drilled in a coconut and it is filled with rice. Coconut is secured to a pole. The money reaches its small hand through the hole and gets a handful of rice. The clenched fist is too big to be pulled out through that same hole. The monkey won’t let go of its prize treat but can never pull its hand out to enjoy it. And this is captured.

    Like

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