The Best Job in the World?
By Tracy Phua, 23, Singapore
A recent piece of news startled me. It reads: “Japan pizza chain offers $31,000 per hour part-time job.”
Two Singaporean radio hosts picked up the story and discussed it in their morning program. One of them exclaimed, “Wow, the one who gets this job definitely has the best job in the world. He surely won’t dread waking up every morning for this!”
That got me thinking. If you’re paid significantly more than the salary that you’re currently drawing, but your job becomes significantly less enjoyable, will that make you more excited for work? Well, I wouldn’t. However, our world embraces the notion that “money makes the world go round.” But does it?
Solomon tells us something very different:
“Those who love money will never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness! The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what good is wealth—except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers!” (Ecclesiastes 5:10-11)
Here is Solomon, the king who had accomplished so much and had everything going for him—wisdom, wealth, possessions, pleasures, and land. Yet he also said in Ecclesiastes 2:11, “But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere.”
Ultimately Solomon found no pleasure in everything that he owned (which was a lot!). His assessment drives home the value of contentment.
Paul’s oft-quoted verse in First Timothy says this, “Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth” (1 Timothy 6:6). When we get confused with our priorities, and place God-given blessings before God Himself, that’s when we find our lives riddled with discontentment.
The road to contentment involves us acknowledging the Giver and to respond in gratitude and humbleness. We cannot count our successes as our own because it is only through Him that we have the ability to achieve anything of value. They are a gift from Him (Ecclesiastes 5:19).
Let’s take a leaf out of Solomon’s book today and embrace our blessings with the simple recognition that each of them is a gift from God. We don’t need the best job in the world because, contrary to the song, money doesn’t make the world go round—God does.
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By Tracy Phua, 23, Singapore A recent piece of news startled me. It reads: “Japan pizza chain offers $31,000 per hour part-time job.” Two Singaporean radio hosts picked up the story and discussed it in their morning program. One of them exclaimed, “Wow, the one who gets this job definitely has the best job in [...]
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