Proverbs 10:22-24

Mark the emphasis the verse itself supplies: the blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich — it, and not the grind alone. Hold this with verse 4 and you have the whole biblical economics of work: the sluggard expects prosperity without diligence; the practical atheist expects it from diligence alone; the believer works diligently and looks for the increase from God (Psalm 127:1–2). And the second clause is the part money can't counterfeit: "he addeth no sorrow with it." Plenty of fortunes arrive with their canker built in — Lot's, Ahab's, Gehazi's, Haman's — gain wrapped around grief. What God gives carries no such freight: wealth without woe, store without sore, gold without guilt. (And no, this is no prosperity guarantee — chapter 3 settled that: a tendency under God's providence, with the blessing itself, possessed even in leanness, being the true riches.) One sharp word for the businessman: many a firm is named "So-and-So and Company" — reverently take the All-seeing One into your company and counsels, for if you cast Him out, there's no telling whom you've taken in.

What a man laughs at is an X-ray. To the fool, mischief is sport — entertainment with someone else's bill attached. Costly sport: the fires men light for fun keep burning after the joke dies. A diver under thirty feet of water feels none of its weight; a man over his head in sin feels none of his — that's not freedom, that's depth.

One of the most symmetrical sentences in the Bible: the wicked will get what he feared and miss what he hoped; the righteous will get what he hoped and miss what he feared. The wicked man's dread is no superstition — there is reality in it; conscience is in it; God is in it — and it is sailing toward him like a ship running full-sail on a false reckoning. The righteous man's desires get granted because grace has retrained them to want what God wants to give — though sometimes the answer comes dressed as a cross, according to our wants and not our wishes.