Today, I can’t help but to pull out a few different things...I love this Proverb!

The first pair of verses that jump out at me are verses 7 and 8:

“One pretends to be rich, yet has nothing;

another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth.

The ransom of a man’s life is his wealth, but a poor man hears no threat.”

...and with these, I love verse 25:

“The righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite,

but the belly of the wicked suffers want.”

Wealth is a funny thing.  For the sake of today, though it may be semantics, I want to differentiate wealth and riches.  In verse 7, notice that the author says ‘riches’...one pretends to be rich, as in has a lot of material possessions, and has nothing.  That would be that he drives a car that is not really within his budget, he lives a lifestyle he can’t afford while saving too little, he is working to LOOK like he belongs in a certain group when he really can’t pull it off financially...he is chasing riches and riches are a motivation for him.  And, look at the word in verse 25, it is SO important - appetite.  The author says that the righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite.  It is important to recognize that for many of us, not all of us, but MANY of us, riches are a thing of appetite.  The more we have, the more we want.  And it is a viscous cycle that never ends.  Appetites are satisfied for a season, and then they must be filled again.  In order to suppress an appetite, you must starve it.  In this context, that means finding ways to learn to say “no” to myself as a matter of routine.

Great question for though - how can I make a habit or a game out of saying “no” to myself regularly?

Look at the contrast with verse 8 - another pretends to be poor (meaning, he doesn’t play the riches game) and what does he get?  Not riches, obviously...but wealth?  What is wealth then?  In the Bible context, wealth is financial contentment - or what author and speaker Brian Portnoy calls, “Funded Contentment”.  This is a term that simply means, I have enough.

Now, the author says all throughout Proverbs that we are to work hard...and I don’t think the author thinks money is bad or that earning a lot of it is bad.  The thing is, the goal is to have enough...and enough is both a mindset and an amount.  The mindset part is what we’ve been talking about...enough is living in a state of controlled appetite and having enough to live a life that gives you a chance to express your visions and your values in how you live.  We could spend days on this topic, and I am deep into the study of how to articulate this and to actually build a process of calculating this - but, or our purposes,  just recognize that thousands of years ago the author was already onto this; living a life of funded contentment - being ‘wealthy’, not rich.

So good!

Another verse that jumps out at me, and is a favorite of mine for a while now is verse 20:

“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.”

Here is the one quick thing I will point out here...that the company we keep is hugely important.  It is true for our kids as well as for us adults...we are a product of the company we keep; it is just that simple.  AND, notice that hanging out with foolish people doesn’t guarantee that we’ll become a fool...no, notice that the promise is that it will bring us harm.  Meaning, foolish company harms us over time, or it can be all-of-the-sudden, or both...but keeping foolish company brings problems.  We can’t just teach our kids this stuff and forget it ourselves!