When I surveyed all … I had toiled
to achieve, everything was meaningless.
—Ecclesiastes 2:11
Ecclesiastes 6 profiles two men who had wealth, but didn’t have God.
The first was super successful: “he lacks nothing his heart desires”—at least nothing that money could buy. But he didn’t enjoy his bounty, died unhappy, and left his fortune to people who hadn’t worked for it (vv. 1-2).
The second was prosperous, had a bunch of children, and lived a long life—but died unloved and miserable. It would have been better, he said, not to have lived at all (vv. 3-6).
The day you realize that what you have is a gift from God, and become “generous and ready to share,” that’s the day, says Paul, when you “take hold of life that is truly life” (1 Tim. 6:17-19).
You can’t buy your way
into happiness, or out of misery.