day no. 15,909: wealth control

“Life is so brief that no man can afford to lose a day. It has been well said that if a great king should bring us a great heap of gold, and bid us take as much as we could count in a day, we should make a long day of it.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

While we are not obligated to pursue as much blessing as possible, some blessings require this caveat more than others. 

For example: Children are a blessing. The Bible tells me so.

Psalm 127:3

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

But children are the kind of blessing people are happy to have at a minimum. They use birth control and family planning to limit how much blessing they have to put up with. They postpone marriage in order to pursue other things. They then pick marital partners based on how many children the other wants to have. They can't imagine what they would even do with 5, 6, 7 kids. That would be too many.

It's a good conversation and one well worth having.

But riches are a blessing as well. The Bible tells me that too.

Proverbs 10:22

It is the blessing of the LORD that makes rich.

But money is the kind of blessing people are happy to see maximized. Few have invested much if any thought into how much money would be too much for them. No one uses wealth control to keep themselves from becoming too well off. No one uses upward mobility management to keep from getting promoted too quickly. No one goes into marriage with a ceiling of how much money they are comfortable making or picks their partners for their insistence on making no more than a particular dollar amount per year. No one takes measures to make sure they only have so much money. And no one lacks ideas for what they would do if they had more of it. Creativity abounds and wish lists accumulate when it comes to considering MORE money.

It's a conversation worth having, but few are contemplating or considering it.

Time is a blessing from God. We tend to want less of it, like children, when we think of it in terms of responsibilities and we tend to want more of it, like money, when we think of it in terms of personal fulfillment. We want our work to be short and our leisure to be long. We want our obligations to be quicker and our play to be extended.