A WORD FOR TODAY, June 2, 2025
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, June 2, 2025
“For he sees that wise men die; likewise the fool and the senseless perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought is that their houses will endure forever, and their dwelling places to all generations. They name their lands after themselves. But man, despite his riches, doesn’t endure. He is like the animals that perish. This is the destiny of those who are foolish, and of those who approve their sayings. Selah. They are appointed as a flock for Sheol. Death shall be their shepherd. The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. Their beauty shall decay in Sheol, far from their mansion. But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me. Selah. Don’t be afraid when a man is made rich, when the glory of his house is increased; for when he dies he will carry nothing away. His glory won’t descend after him. Though while he lived he blessed his soul - and men praise you when you do well for yourself - he shall go to the generation of his fathers. They shall never see the light. A man who has riches without understanding, is like the animals that perish.” Psalm 49:10-20, WEB
Several page suggestions often come up on my social media that show the most unique, bizarre, and ridiculous houses that are currently for sale around the country. One house was originally built out of spite for an ex-husband who gave the ex-wife an unusable piece of land in their divorce. She built a house on it anyway. It was an asymmetric rectangle that filled every legal inch of that property, with one end only a few feet wide. Another house was filled with unusual built in play areas. Some are so bizarrely decorated that you wonder how the people could live there. One house was an Italian villa-like home that was never finished, probably because it was so huge that the builders ran out of money. There was another house that had a finished and decorated space so big that it housed more than a dozen classic cars.
Many of the houses are very grand, with thousands of square feet of living space, gold details and marble floors, theaters and bowling alleys, indoor and outdoor pools, separate guest quarters and more bathrooms than any family could ever need. I am awed by these homes. These owners fill their homes with ridiculously expensive items. One room seemed to be made from pure gold with chandeliers worth tens of thousands of dollars. In one bathroom, they had an ancient statue carved from wood that was worth more than a hundred thousand dollars. In a bathroom.
I confess that I sometimes envy the owners of these homes. I don’t blame them for having houses that are bigger than necessary (except maybe the owner who could not even finish building), after all we have a house that some might consider bigger than necessary. We also filled our home with beautiful things, the best we could afford. We have never bought a million-dollar home, but I’m sure there are people who think that we are rich fools.
As much as I am awed by those houses, I doubt I would ever purchase one. I think about how impossible it would be to furnish them. Are there even enough couches for 30,000 square feet? How do you clean that much space? Visitors who took a wrong turn could be lost forever! However, I can't help but envy those who live in some of these homes that I see. Fortunately, I know that it is foolish to buy something beyond my means, but even more so, I hope that if I ever come into enough wealth to afford one of those homes, that I will think twice about how I spend it.
We are studying the Book of Proverbs in my adult forum class, and we have talked about this very thing. The commentary we are using has divided the proverbs into topics, rather than studying them verse by verse. Yesterday’s topic was pride. It was interesting because the author of the commentary included proverbs that focused on what he called “the cousins of pride”: greed, jealousy, and envy. Greed is doing everything we can to get as much as we can. Jealousy is fearing the loss of something that is ours. Envy is wanting what isn’t ours. These three cousins are founded in pride, in the belief that we deserve whatever we can get, however we can get it. It is the belief that we deserve what we want and what we have.
The problem is that pride keeps us from being thankful for what we have. It makes us willing to do whatever is necessary to be the best, to have the most, to be the most impressive to our neighbors. However, we have to remember that we won’t take any of it with us. Buying a bigger house and filling it with beautiful things is not necessarily a bad thing. I wanted my home so I could share it with family and friends. Yet, too many people seek bigger and better for all the wrong reasons. I can’t possibly know what is in the heart of my neighbor, but God knows that we are guilty of pride, greed, jealousy, and envy, that’s why He teaches us in Proverbs how to be humble, content, and generous.
We are called to be thankful for what we have, and I have so much for which I should be thankful. I would love to be able to buy and fill some of those houses, but I know that what I have is enough. The most important thing in our lives is not the place where we lay our heads but our relationship with Jesus Christ. The final verse in today’s passage tells us that it is not wealth that is the problem, but the lack of understanding. When we know that our wealth is fleeting and perishable, that it will be passed on to another in the day of our death, we will live in that wealth with mercy and love. This is what matters. No matter what wealth we have, no matter how many zeroes are in our net worth or the value of our home, those who live in the love of God will be blessed today and always.
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