A Handful of Feathers

Some people ruin themselves by being lazy. Others ruin themselves by chasing money as if it were a god. There’s a time to get up and work hard, and there’s a time to stop, rest, and reset. The wise believer knows the difference and lives by it.

Proverbs 23:4-5 says, “Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.”

Notice what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say “don’t work.” It doesn’t say “don’t earn.” It says, “don’t wear yourself out chasing wealth.” Why? Because wealth is fleeting. “It sprouts wings and flies away like an eagle toward heaven.”

If you’ve ever watched a paycheck vanish in two days, you know what this means. If you’ve stared at your retirement account the morning after a market crash, you know what this means. Money has wings. It doesn’t walk away politely—it bolts, flapping and screeching like a bird startled from the trees. One moment it’s perched in your account, and the next it’s circling out of reach.

But here’s the balance: Proverbs also warns against laziness. “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise” (Prov. 6:6). The ant doesn’t sit around waiting for crumbs to fall; she’s diligent, tireless, preparing for what’s to come. Scripture condemns sloth just as strongly as it condemns greed.

So we have two ditches to avoid:

* On one side: laziness, neglect, waste.
* On the other side: obsession, greed, burnout.

Wisdom walks the narrow road between them. Work hard, but not so hard you make wealth your god. Be diligent, but discerning enough to stop.

Think of it like training. If you never exercise, your muscles atrophy. But if you push too far, you tear ligaments and cripple yourself. Both extremes ruin the body. The same is true with wealth-building. The question is: can you discern when enough is enough?

Chasing wealth for its own sake is like chasing a shadow at sundown. The faster you run, the longer it stretches, the farther it flees. You’ll die winded and empty-handed.

And even if you manage to catch it—pile up the barns, fill the accounts—it never sits still. Proverbs says it takes flight, and life proves the point. Wealth is like a nervous bird: you can feed it from your hand for a season, but it was never meant to roost there forever.

We see this in the “rags to rags in three generations” pattern. The first generation bleeds and sweats to build. The second enjoys and maintains. By the third, the vision has curdled, the hunger is gone, and the bird is gone with it. Emily Griffiths Hamilton notes that the real failure isn’t just poor financial management—it’s mission drift. Money was passed down, but not the values, not the grit, not the purpose that made it in the first place. By the third generation, the cupboards are bare, the barns are empty, and the bird has flown.

This is exactly what Proverbs warns us against. Wealth is a tool, never a telos. It is for provision, for building households, for strengthening communities, for advancing the kingdom of God. To worship it is to end up like the man chasing shadows or clutching feathers from an eagle already gone.

The wise know this: wealth comes and goes, but God’s mission remains. You don’t build so your barns will impress the neighbors, you build to have something to honor the Lord with. Something to hand down with purpose. Something that outlives you because it was never about you in the first place.