Proverbs 28:25

This proverb comes from the book of Proverbs, a collection of ancient wisdom sayings gathered in Israel, many attributed to King Solomon. The proverb uses sharp contrast — a common technique in this book — to set two kinds of people side by side. Greed here is not only about money; in the original Hebrew, it describes a soul that is always restless, always grasping for more — more control, more approval, more security. That inner restlessness, the proverb observes, doesn't stay contained: it spills out and stirs up conflict around the greedy person. Trusting God, by contrast, produces the kind of settled prosperity that grasping can never manufacture.

God, I confess that I grasp for things I should simply trust you with. The restlessness in me stirs up more trouble than I usually admit. Teach me what it actually feels like to trust you — not just say the words, but open my hands. I want the kind of settled peace that only comes from you. Amen.

Greed doesn't always look like a person hoarding gold. Sometimes it looks like the coworker who can never share credit for anything. The family member who quietly engineers every gathering to keep themselves at the center. The friend who listens just long enough to redirect the conversation back to their own life. At its root, greed is a trust problem — a deep, unspoken suspicion that there won't be enough, so you'd better grab what you can before someone else does. And this proverb is brutally accurate about the social fallout: that posture spreads. It poisons rooms. It stirs things up. The alternative the proverb offers isn't "settle for less" or "want nothing." It is something more active and more costly — *trusting the Lord*. That is a daily decision, sometimes a minute-by-minute one, to believe that God's economy doesn't run on scarcity. That your worth is not determined by what you accumulate, control, or hold onto. What would it look like in one specific situation today to actually loosen your grip — not as passive resignation, but as a genuine act of faith that what God provides is genuinely enough?