What do I do during the week...

The following quote was not said by me. It wasn't even said by someone working in tax. But it seems to reflect my job, albeit that I work for companies (which in the end are owned by wealthy people) but it takes an axe to what tax people actually achieve from a broader societal perspective.

"....become a tax consultant!! Does no good for anybody but gives you a safe income. And there's always a need for you - you'll never lack a job if you're a tax consultant. We've got some of the brightest people in our land working hard so that we can minimise the amount of tax that wealthy people have got to pay. So we're actually employing some of the cleverest people in our society to rob us from our own taxes and our own wealth. Now that's a really sensible society isn't it.

And I'm so glad you're training to be one. But excuse me for suggesting to you that your education in accounting is not an education. It's just a technical training - you could actually get a bright monkey to do it. Not a matter of thought or deep reflection; its a matter of getting a job. It's about getting a career. Rise, rise, rise...through the path, up the career - that's what it's about. That's what university's about. It's the love of money."

Just because you have a job that earns you good money, does not mean that you love money. But it has been interesting, in the past little while to realise how much money can become loveable, and how quickly it can become a force to be used for good and for bad.

My job pays the bills, and pays them very adequately, but it is no wonder that occasionally I'll have an Ecclesiastes moment... and contemplate the futility of it all.

Again, I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, "For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?" This also is vanity and an unhappy business. (Ecclesiastes 4:7-8)

Please pray for people with prosperity. Pray that their eyes would be satisfied, that their trust would be in their King Jesus, and that they would continue toiling, not for themselves, but instead for the growth of the kingdom.