Daily Worship

Obscenity of wealth

Alec Shuttleworth September 03, 2013 0 0

Ecclesiastes 5:10-15 NRSV

The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain. This also is vanity. When goods increase, those who eat them increase; and what gain has their owner but to see them with his eyes?

Sweet is the sleep of laborers, whether they eat little or much; but the surfeit of the rich will not let them sleep. There is a grievous ill that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owners to their hurt, and those riches were lost in a bad venture; though they are parents of children, they have nothing in their hands.

As they came from their mother's womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came; they shall take nothing for their toil, which they may carry away with their hands.

We see the obscenity of wealth
The craziness of a world
Where a footballers weekly wage
Could feed and house and educate
5,000 Rwandan orphans for a year

Lord preserve us
From the envy which lies at so much of or criticism
As we daydream of what we would do
And how much is the "little"
We would keep for ourselves.

And show us today
not what others might do
but what we can do
and should.

Amen.
--
Rev Alec Shuttleworth
Tulliallan and Kincardine Parish Church