A Gift of God

Wealth, like manna, is the gift of God. It is like that spread by His hand around us every day. Some are able to gather much more than others. By their skill, health, diligence, or by providential arrangements, they are eminently successful.

Others are sick, aged, unskilled, and less successful. All that is obtained is by the arrangement of God. The health, the strength, the skill, the wisdom by which we are enabled to obtain wealth, are all His gift.

Honestly obtained wealth should be regarded as His bounty, and we should esteem it a privilege daily to impart to others less favored and less successful. To continue the analogy, manna—if kept more than a single day—became foul and loathsome. Does not wealth that should have been distributed to relieve the wants of others become corrupting in its nature? Wealth, like manna, should be employed in the service which God designs—employed to diffuse everywhere the blessings of religion, comfort, and peace.

Albert Barnes, Source unknown