What Is the Question

"A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything." Ecclesiastes 10:19

If money is the answer for everything, what is the question?

Money, we know, cannot ensure health, happiness or immortality. It cannot buy peace of conscience or loving relationships. Yet it is not to be despised. Money supplies a thousand advantages. It can support a Christian college, send a missionary to Africa, supply Bibles to China, buy cooling fans for poor people in the city.

It is not money that is "a root of all kinds of evil," but the love of money (I Timothy 6:10). Jesus condemns money when it becomes an object of devotion equal to God (Matthew 6:24). In His parable of the ten minas (Luke 19:11-16), the third servant who laid his monty away in a piece of cloth was punished because he didn't put his money to work. He didn't even invest it so it could earn a little interest.

God is the ultimate supplier of all wealth. He puts us in a position where we have money, either by giving us employment, an inheritance, wise investments or perhaps a jackpot because we matched picture cards from a fast-food restaurant. However we got what money we have, God enabled us to have it. Therefore, He has a right to say what we do with the money He gave us.

The question is, what is my most versatile possession? The answer is, money. God's guideline to those who possess it is amazingly simple: "Command them to do good." (I Timothy 6:18).

By Jean Shaw, taken from "Women's Devotional Bible 2"

Bible Reading Guide:

Beginning to End: Proverbs 24-26
Old and New Testaments Together: Psalm 29-30 & Acts 23:1-15
Historical: Psalm 119:89-176
Chronological: Hos. 8-14
Blended: Psalm 29-30 & Acts 15:22-41

The Bible reading guides will be taken from Back to the Bible