Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. – Proverbs 10:4

Today’s Scripture Reading (September 28, 2019): Proverbs 10

What do you want to be when you grow up? I know, for a lot of us that is a question that we left behind long in the past. And yet it remains a worthy one at almost every stage of life. What is it that we are aspiring toward in the next phase of life. The problem that we miss is that when we stop aspiring toward something, we begin our serious descent into death. It doesn’t have to be an earth-shattering reason, but every morning there must be a reason to get out of bed and on with our lives.

But there is a disturbing trend at almost every stage of life to aspire towards only what it is that will make us money. Money often seems to have become our goal. And I get it, the need for cash exists at every stage of life. But the unfortunate reality is that aspiring toward money doesn’t actually work. Increasingly, I meet with people under the age of forty who want to retire in the next decade; but that is the end of the plan. They are increasingly looking for an easy way to get to that early retirement date without having to work hard in the present. And the result of that strategy is almost always poverty in retirement, rather than an early retirement.

So Solomon’s advice? Laziness, or chasing after money without work, is a prime recipe for poverty. Working hard is the main pathway to wealth. But there is a second part to this advice. If you work hard at a job that you hate; getting up in the morning will always be a challenge. The best advice that Solomon could give would be not only that we should plan to work hard, but that we should plan to work hard at a job that we enjoy. Because then, it won’t seem like hard work, and wealth will still come.

Solomon’s advice still holds true today. Working hard results in wealth. But the next stage in our financial development is what we do with that wealth. And, for too many of us, we are willing to give away our hard-earned wealth almost as quickly as we receive it; and usually to feed our addictions, or even just to McDonald's or some other purveyor of fast food. And so we are poor, not because we are unwilling to work hard, but because we refuse to hold on to the fruit of our labor. Of course, that is a different problem.

So what do you want to be when you grow up. Because whatever it is that you are aspiring toward in the next stage of life, both your health and wealth lie in the balance.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Proverbs 11