The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep. – Ecclesiastes 5:12

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 14, 2013): Ecclesiastes 5

A couple of weeks ago a tweet (from Twitter) sent the economic markets in North America briefly into a freefall. The tweet was false, written by someone who had successfully hacked into the account of a media outlet. The media outlet has apologized for the tweet and the hacker has taken responsibility (meaning that they have bragged about doing it) but the action showed us how on edge we are as a society. From the moment of the tweet it took only a few seconds for the market to react negatively to the false news. Because of the swiftness of the reply the considered opinion was that the freefall was not due to computer controlled economic accounts; rather the fall resulted because real life people read the tweet and immediately started to sell their stock. It was only after the first human reaction to the false news that computer driven accounts started to react to the negative downturn by initiating sale orders and driving the stocks even lower.

Our society seems to be existing on the edge of something. The problem is that I am not sure that we know the ‘what’ that we exist on the edge of. But the reality is that the ‘what’ probably is not a poor person’s problem. In our society, we have incredible wealth. I recently had a very real conversation with someone about my retirement savings account. And I mentioned how much I had in the account, which to me was almost nothing – not near what it is that I feel that I need in that account. But the response that came back to me was that this person did not have a retirement account. He had cashed it all in just to try to live. And so the reality is that when the market economic crash comes, it has more of an effect on me than it would have on him. And it would have more of an effect on a lot of people around me than it has on me.   

Now, the reality is that we all need retirement accounts, but with wealth (and we are wealthy) comes its own special problems. And this is part of The Teachers message. We work for the things that we need, but it costs us sleep (and our society seems to be one that is in need of sleep.) Our abundance just gives us more things to worry about as we go through life. And the solution is not necessarily that we need less (we need retirement savings for that time in the future when even we will retire), but rather that we cannot put our trust in our wealth. Trusting in our money will only cost us sleep – and the reality is that our money is a temporary thing that has no real power to save us. It is when we lose sight of that that we really begin to have a problem.

Again, I am not saying that our savings accounts and retirement savings are unnecessary. I do not believe that. I do believe that they are simply one tool among many that we use as we live our lives. It is good to have money – but we can survive even if we do lose it.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes 6