The Gift We Rarely Appreciate

It’s been said that you can blot out the sun if you hold a penny close enough to your eye. Of course that’s not literally true, but it is true in a sense: perspective matters, and a small thing, when brought too near, can eclipse everything else.

That image is helpful when we come to Ecclesiastes, especially as the Preacher reflects on money and possessions (5:8–6:6). Our hearts are prone to a kind of spiritual nearsightedness. We fix our gaze on material things—on what we have, what we lack, or what we fear losing—and in doing so lose sight of the God who gives. And when that happens, there is collateral damage. Money fails to deliver what it promises, and joy itself begins to slip through our fingers.

The Danger of Wealth
When the Preacher turns to wealth, he isn’t blind to life under the sun. He sees injustice — the oppression of the poor, economic systems bent by sin and power. He tells us not to be surprised. A fallen world produces fallen arrangements, and no amount of human ordering can finally erase that reality. Ultimate justice will not come through policy or prosperity, but through the judgment of God.

And yet, remarkably, the Preacher does not respond to these evils by condemning material provision itself. The problem, he insists, isn’t money. The earth is productive. The land yields profit for all. Even kings depend on its fields. God has filled creation with good things, and those things are meant to sustain human life. Scripture consistently affirms this truth. God gives daily bread. He provides what we need. He has made a world that can be worked, cultivated, and enjoyed. Wealth and possessions, in themselves, are not the enemy.

But the Preacher also knows that even good gifts, left unchecked by wisdom, easily become dangerous ones.

Money does not satisfy. Those who love it never have enough. It promises fulfillment but always demands more. It overpromises and underdelivers – and it cannot do otherwise, because no amount of temporal abundance can satisfy a heart made for eternity.

Money also brings anxiety. The laborer sleeps soundly, whether he eats little or much, but abundance often robs the rich of rest. Worry follows money from its acquisition to its preservation. Scripture does not flatter us here. Anxiety is not prudence baptized with religious language; it is a sign that trust has drifted.

Then there is misfortune. Riches can be hoarded to one’s harm or lost through circumstances beyond control. One bad decision, one downturn, one unforeseen event—and what once felt secure can vanish. Money is a poor shield against providence.

And finally, money is temporary. We enter the world with nothing and leave the same way. All the effort expended to gain and protect wealth ends the same for everyone. No possession crosses the grave.

None of this should surprise us. But it does press a deeper question: why does God give wealth at all, and why does he continue to bestow gifts that so often become occasions for temptation and sorrow?

The Power of Enjoyment
The Preacher’s answer is strikingly simple. God gives so that his people may receive their portion and rejoice in it—to eat, to drink, to enjoy the good of one’s labor. This, he says plainly, is the gift of God.

To draw this out, the Preacher sets two men side by side. Both are given wealth. Both have possessions. Both lack nothing they desire. Yet only one of them enjoys what he has. The other cannot.

That contrast matters because the difference is not effort, discipline, temperament, or circumstance. The difference is that God gives one man the power to enjoy, and withholds it from the other. This is the heart of the passage: enjoyment is not automatic, not guaranteed by abundance, and not something we manufacture if we try hard enough — it’s a gift.

So severe is the loss of enjoyment that the Preacher describes it as a grievous evil. A man may have wealth, honor, long life — even children in abundance — and yet never truly live. His days are joyless. His soul is unsatisfied. He exists without rest. And the Preacher does not soften the conclusion: such a life is worse than never having lived at all.

The point is clear. God gives not only the gifts, but the capacity to take joy in them. That truth reshapes how we think about daily life. We often thank God for what we have, but rarely for the fact that we enjoy it. And yet both come from him. The ability to taste, delight, rest, and find satisfaction — these are not accidents of biology or temperament. They are mercies.

And they are mercies given particularly to God’s children. Ecclesiastes elsewhere makes this explicit: “To the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God” (Ecc. 2:26). Faith, not possession, is the dividing line.

This distinction also clarifies what enjoyment is not. It is not hedonism. Pleasure is not ultimate— God is. Enjoyment that detaches the gift from the Giver collapses into idolatry. But enjoyment that flows from dependence, gratitude, and trust honors God rather than competes with him.

We enjoy rightly when we live dependently, knowing we have received everything. When gratitude shapes our posture rather than guilt over what we have or fear of losing it. When generosity marks our use of what we have. When contentment steadies our hearts. When sin does not commandeer what God has given for rebellion.

In short, enjoyment begins with enjoying God.

The Preacher does not call us to reject the good of this world, nor to clutch it anxiously. He calls us to receive it as gift and to rejoice — not because it is ultimate, but because God is kind. When the gifts are held too close, they eclipse the Giver; when received from his hand, they bring real enjoyment.

Enjoyment is a gift, but it’s a gift we rarely appreciate.