Money is the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing at night. I would not say I love it, but it clearly owns most of my attention. How do I get that back?

“The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.”

The Preacher notices something the wealthy of his day would rather not admit: the labourer sleeps soundly whether he ate much or little, while abundance keeps its owner awake. It is a clinical observation rather than a moral one. More money does not reduce the mental load; past a point it increases it, because there is more to monitor, protect and potentially lose. Anxiety scales with holdings.

“And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”

Jesus explains the parable of the sower to his disciples, and this is the seed among thorns. He does not describe an attack on faith but a crowding out, by anxieties, by the deceitfulness of riches, by ordinary desires for other things. The word translated choke suggests gradual strangling rather than violence. Nothing dramatic happens. The concerns simply take up all the room until nothing else has any.