Please read “E1. Meaning to the Meaningless” before reading any of my other articles on Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes 2:24 “A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil.” (NIV)

Wealth has many problems. First, it is not easy to gain. To gain wealth requires a great deal of labor. The teacher put great toil and effort into amassing wealth. His effort to gain great wealth left him anxious to the point that he could not rest well at night. His mind was always scheming and planning to the point he could not relax. When he discovered wealth could not buy happiness he considered all his effort to have been in vain.

He discovered another problem with wealth, once you have it, you must work hard to keep it. He started out owning wealth, and discovered that wealth now owned him. He had to guard it from those who would take it. He had to store it, and he had a protected from the elements. Rust and decay does not care how rich you are, it attacks a rich man’s possessions the same as that of a poor man.

Perhaps the most disheartening problem with wealth was that he could not take it with him when he died. Everything he had worked so hard to gain he would leave for others to enjoy. He founded it vanity that others, many who were fools, would enjoy the fruits of his labor. He concluded, it would be better to enjoy life more, work less, and labored at toil he found satisfying.

Godly-wisdom does not always contradict earthly wisdom, often godly-wisdom complements or completes earthly wisdom. God wants us to find satisfaction in our work. There are two aspects of a Christian’s work. We work to meet the needs of our family and ourselves, but our most important work is what we do to build the kingdom of God. The work we do for the kingdom is not meaningless, and the reward is not temporal. We do not work because we love wealth. We work because we love God.