Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle (Proverbs 23:5).

I was recently talking with my aunt, who also happens to be the manager of our extended family's land development business.  She is an excellent business-woman, like her father before her, and she directs the company's day-to-day affairs with skill and integrity.  Even so, my aunt used that recent conversation to tell me that I needed to live as if I might never see any money come from the family business.  This is easy enough for me to do, given the fact that I've had a small holding in the company since the earliest days of my life -- and in all those years, I haven't seen much cash flow at all (in fact, more than anything up to this point, it's created hassles with taxes and with things like applying for financial aid during my college years).  But still, it seemed a little bit unusual that my aunt would be offering such advice, given the fact that all current indications suggest that a decent amount of money should be coming my way someday and that this was my grandfather's original intent for the family business, after all.  But here my aunt was telling me that I needed to live as if there would be no inheritance or income from the family business at all.

I told her that I would take her advice to heart -- and, in fact, I had already been living according to such expectations:  that if anything were to ever come from the family business, then it would simply be icing on the cake.  But then I asked her why she was telling me that.  Why was she, as business manager talking to one of the "partners," telling us that we should expect nothing?  Wouldn't a person in her position normally try to put a positive a spin on things, as much as possible?  My aunt's answer was surprisingly similar to Solomon's wisdom from Proverbs 23:5.

It's not really wise to count on anything as being a "sure thing."  Especially when it comes to money.  My aunt said that she was worried that a lot of my cousins (i.e. other stake-holders in the company) were depending too much on the possibility of money coming from the family business.  They were letting that possibility affect their career decision-making, their interpersonal relationships, and their general sense of well-being.  And unfortunately, these expressions of faith in finances were not improving their quality of life; if anything, they were making their lives more difficult.  And, say, if there were to be some sort of collapse in the Midwestern real estate market, these problems would be greatly exacerbated.  This sort of misguided hope could be catastrophic.

It all goes to remind us:  if we put our faith in money -- or anything other than God Himself -- we're always misguided.  It seems that all we have to do is look at money and it can evaporate right in front of us.  Or it will sprout wings and fly off into the sky, like an eagle.  This doesn't mean that it's bad to save or to invest.  This doesn't mean that money is useless or inherrently evil.  It's just that we can never trust in money.  We can trust only in God.  God will not disappear, when we cast our eyes on him.  God will not sprout wings and fly off, when we need Him.

I don't think we could ever ask for a better inheritance than that.