Bread, Benefits, and Diamonds.

Fred wheeled himself out of the back door of his house to appreciate the lovely flowers in full bloom adorning his garden. He leans forward to reach out and enjoys the sweet aroma from one of the blooms. Unfortunately for him, out of the window of the house backing on to his, Deborah Ville gazes at Fred with a level of smug satisfaction.

Fred is a victim of a muscle disease which gradually restricted his mobility to a level where he had to be confined to a wheelchair. Having lost his ability to stand, walk and run, he lost his job as a contractor, and afterwards lost his wife too, still in her thirties, to a dishy colleague she met in the office, and to whom she fell in love. Fred, feeling angry and crushed by the loss of his spouse, also had to fight tooth and nail to claim his Disability Allowance, the only source of income with which he is able to live reasonably well.

Deborah is convinced that Fred is a Benefit cheat, milking on the taxes paid by hard-working professionals. As a sour-faced spinster, past middle age and who had never dated, and remaining childless throughout her life, she considers herself a model of moral idealism, and she can be seen at her traditional Church of England service every Sunday morning, dressed in her best finery and topped with her favourite decorated bonnet. She is disliked by her neighbours, and one of them overheard her giving her name to an official, as Miss D. Ville. No doubt, her nickname became known along the street, and so she remains referred to by her initial and surname.

Deborah turns back from her window before Fred has a chance to spot her. She heads for the 'phone and dials the DWP. She reports that this "disabled" Fred at such-and-such an address has been spotted as less disabled than he claims. A couple of weeks later, he receives a letter through the post announcing that his allowance has been stopped, as a result of a tip-off. Suspecting this might have been the work of Deborah Ville but unable to prove it, he heads back to the benefits office to prove his case. No success. He is analysed as fit to work, and he should consider himself lucky he did not face a Court prosecution. In the weeks to come, as he watches his bank account slowly diminish as both his stomach and the pursuing of his fuel creditors continue relentlessly with their demands, he looks for adequate employment, only to be turned away by one potential employer after another.

Deep depression sets in. He suffers loss of appetite and sleep. He turns on the radio to listen to the latest news bulletin. The headline was about the sale of two diamond jewels to a total of £50 million, bought at an auction by a Chinese businessman for his seven-year-old daughter. Never mind that this rich fellow had a five year prison term passed upon him for money-laundering. By staying out of the country where he was convicted, he can live on as normal, avoiding jail. All this to Fred was rubbing salt into the wound. He had already read about the fat cat lifestyle enjoyed by high flying management, especially of the Police, the banking industry, and the NHS, with their sky-high incomes, bonuses, golden pensions, and early retirement. Not to say good health as well, luxury yachts in the Mediterranean, round-the-world travel, posh cars, luxury homes away in the country and not among the terraced estate where he resides. Fred just could not understand why there is such gross inequality this day and age in the 21st Century. 

Fred felt his depression intensify as he watches his bank account go into negative equity. As he watches the figure with its minus sign in front grow bigger and bigger, so did his fears grew. After receiving yet another letter of rejection from a potential employer, he felt he had enough. With the pittance of a cash reserve he has always kept on the side, he buys a bus ticket to the coast, where there is a high cliff. Positioning himself, he wheels himself over the cliff edge, crashing onto the rocky strip of beach many feet below. Meanwhile, on the following Sunday, Deborah Ville makes her way to church, totally unaware of the recent tragedy. Feeling smug that she had fulfilled her moral duty, under the guise of prayer, she starts to thank herself for her high morals, not like that scum of a neighbour who milked the taxpayer with such a "dishonest" claim.

Although I have fictionalised the above story, I have wondered what God says of this when I read media statistics of not a few suicides among the disabled that had taken place due to situations similar to Fred's circumstances. As for Deborah; back in 2005, when I had to reduce my working hours to sit through a six-month parenting assessment, we claimed Housing Benefit until the assessment was over and I returned to full-time work. About three to four months into the assessment, we received a letter saying that not only the benefit had stopped, but we had to pay it all back, due to an anonymous tip-off. So began the tribunal defending our cause for claiming, and we lost the case. Fortunately, the benefit officer was a compassionate female who allowed us a three-year payback interval instead of the twelve-month period which was the norm for failed or dishonest claimants. At least I saw this as an act of mercy at a time of great distress, when the State decided that our mild autism, or Asperger's Syndrome, deemed us unfit to raise our own daughters.  

But I was praised even by our Social Worker for adopting the "Ethic of King Solomon." This was based on the Biblical story of the two prostitutes who presented themselves to King Solomon with a living infant and a dead one. Solomon had to decide who was the mother of the living child. Since each of the two women claimed that the living child was hers, the King ordered a sword to be brought to him, so he could divide the living child in two, so both can have half each. The real mother fell at the King's feet and begged him to give the living child to her rival, but not to kill him. Her rival instead agreed to the kill. Solomon then knew who was the real mother (1 Kings 3:16-28.)

The same is true for our three daughters. Although our hearts grieve over our loss, we now feel that it was better for our daughters to grow up in an environment where they would get the best of everything, rather than miss out under our care, loving and sincere as it might have been. But our hearts continue to grieve, and I believe that has affected the health of both of us. Alex had lost her full mobility, and has become lame. Although she can manage her housework without too much difficulty, whenever she goes outdoors, it has to be in a wheelchair. To see her in that state breaks my heart, but she is a lot more stoic than I am. She takes it all well in her stride. As for me, I would not be at all surprised if there may be a connection between the loss of our daughters and my heart condition. I needed open heart surgery to replace a regurgitating aortic valve. As a manual worker cleaning windows and the need to lift and transport heavy ladders on foot, (I don't drive) I have lost some of my vitality after the procedure. Fortunately, when my 63rd birthday came around just a few months later, I felt this was a good time for retirement, a move backed not only by our Church Elders, but by the majority of my clientele, even with the statement, "It is about time!" uttered by a couple of them.

To some who has always worked and have never been on benefits, I guess it is easy to believe those on benefits to be workshy scroungers, milking the taxpayer. I can understand Deborah's point of view, which is a view seen by many in our country. But to those thinking that retired life is all about ease and leisure, Pension Credit, which we are now receiving, is a benefit which is different to State Pension, which I'll get when I reach 65 years of age. My present benefit enslaves me somewhat to the extent that if my savings exceed £10,000, I have to tell them. Likewise if my wife is taken to hospital, a care home, divorces, or dies. We cannot leave the UK, even for a holiday, without first telling them (although we are not barred from leaving the UK). It is a bit like living on a knife edge. It makes me ashamed in a way, living off the taxpayer, even if I have paid tax throughout my working life. Sometimes I feel immoral by not working, although I comfort myself with the knowledge that 47 years of working since I left school in 1968, is generally longer than one who graduates at university at 21 or 22 years of age, and retires at sixty, after just 38 or 39 years sitting at a desk (although many who receive a doctorate work for even a shorter duration.)  

And here's the point. It was only two years ago that I felt confident enough in my health to work past 65 years of age. I had my own domestic window cleaning business which I was wholly committed to, and fiercely guarded against intrusion by rivals. So to be diagnosed with heart failure during the Summer of 2014 came as a real shocker, believe me! But now as a retiree, I can't help feel a sliver of guilt. Never mind that the Chinese businessman buying diamonds for his daughter is fact, making news headlines, and not fiction. Never mind that there are thousands of those in managerial positions who retire in their fifties with a massive pension. I still can't help feeling at times a sliver of guilt, combined with a feeling of insecurity.

But is benefits Biblical? I believe it is, and the relevant Scripture can be found at Leviticus 19:10 and 23:22, where both verses instructs landowners harvesting their crops, particularly of the vine, not to go back to glean what was left behind, but to leave these grapes for the poor to take freely. This has been written twice by Moses in the same book, emphasising the importance of such a command. This is God ensuring that the needs of the poor are met, and it should be done in love. Likewise, in the New Testament, Paul instructs Timothy to ensure the elderly widow's needs are met (1 Timothy 5:3-16). This is more in line with the present benefit system, but on condition that the widow has no family members to support her, and that she lives a godly life in Jesus Christ.

And that is how I should view the benefits system - as an act of compassion rather than compulsory giving. But then again, had my vocation had been in the office or non-manual, I guess I wouldn't have even considered retirement at this age. Instead, I would have returned to work after my heart operation, and not consider retirement until the proper time.

Especially if I was a jeweller working on expensive diamonds.

Natural Disaster? There Is Hope!

"Vanity, all is vanity!" cries the Preacher. So the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes opens. Penned by King Solomon the son of David, Solomon was the ancestor of Joseph the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Solomon had a far less known brother Nathan, who was the ancestor of Mary herself, making King David the father of Jesus Christ in both the royal and biological lineage.

 

Having just completed the short book in daily morning Bible reading and meditation, I have found this book very pessimistic and if I would say, discouraging - throwing cold water on anyone who is bubbling with ambition and to the goal achievers. For those not so acquainted with Old Testament Scripture, what is Ecclesiastes all about?

 

That life without God is meaningless. A man works hard under the sun to enjoy the fruits of his labour, yet his days are few, and the same fate awaits him as it does to all. All the ambitious are toiling hard to achieve their goals but all they do is chase the wind. He cannot take his earnings or his rewards to the grave, but leave them for others to enjoy. So what is the use of wearing oneself out in heavy toil under the sun? Is he more wise than the lazy person who spends his time twiddling his fingers? Because both will die, the wise and the foolish alike, therefore the industrious wise man is no better off than the lazy fool, as the grave will swallow them both, and their names forgotten afterwards. So someone is born into a family with wealth and possessions, yet God has deprived him from enjoying what he has, instead he hurries around in anxiety in protecting everything he owns, for he knows that his wealth can disappear in a sudden. Someone else may work hard and gain wealth, but what would happen to it after he dies? Would the heir take care of the property and invest wisely, or squander it all away?

 

And so, Solomon writes,

 

What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?

Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains for ever.

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning to its course.

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

(Ecclesiastes 1:3-7)

 

In a world where universal belief was that every natural occurrence is a result of many moody deities in the heavens interfering with the elements, this Scripture is of true wisdom which is wholly backed by science. King Solomon could not have been truer when he described the reality of the earth's rotation and the atmospheric activity of the cyclone, or what we at present call a low pressure system, and the mechanics of the hydraulic cycle. That the sun rises and sets is scientific fact, even though it only appears that way due to the Earth's rotation. It was quite a contrast to the universal view, originated from ancient Egypt and adopted by the Babylonians, that the sun is a deity who dies at dusk, and it is either re-born at dawn, or a new sun-god is born every morning.

 

 

 

And so the UK media has put our recent storms and flooding as newspaper headlines and top priority story in our news bulletins. Talking in Solomon's poetry language, when the homes of the working classes up in the North of England were destroyed by flooding within the last couple of years, yes there was news coverage, but nothing as intense as in the present, as the Media goes hysterical when the prosperous South gets flooded. This is another evil, Solomon would have said, when our Prime Minister declares that "Money is no problem" when it comes to funding in resolving the crisis. Was it a coincidence that he came out with that statement on the same day as when news of a flood over the sports grounds of Eton was broadcast? And as far as I'm aware, I don't recall him declaring this infinite money resource when the floods hit the North a couple years earlier.

 

The floods over the Somerset Levels had been with us since Christmas, but it appears that not too much fuss was made over them, as much of the deluged land was farmland. It took weeks, even months, before our Government ministers turned up to show their support. But when the River Thames had burst its banks, particularly over Berkshire and Surrey, threatening towns such as Henley, Marlow, Datchet, Windsor, and Shepperton, all wealthy upper-middle class settlements, there was panic in Downing Street, and a voice was heard at Parliament. And so our Ministers squabble about one thing over another, yet are powerless to make any real tangible inroads, since how could man, puny as he always have been, tame the violent forces of nature?

 

And so street interviews follows one after another, victims of the flood giving their opinions and points of view of the conveyor belt of storms, persistent rain and gales, homes destroyed by flood waters, stinking sewage, along with power supply failure, fallen trees, abandoned cars and other damaged properties and businesses. Yet one of things I have noticed which is so distinctly British, is that of the sheer stoicism among the interviewees, the containing of emotion when, after years of working so hard and spending so much, to see such a beloved home destroyed along with treasured possessions, family heirlooms, and so on. Oh, isn't the stiff upper lip so admirable during a crisis as intense as this one, a characteristic so unique to Britain, so the newspaper journalists insist, that the UK, especially the English, appear culturally superior to the rest of the world. So our newspaper reporters love to boast on how the British were fit to expand and run an empire, according to them, the greatest and the most extensive in human history. This is another evil under the sun. For when human stoicism was seen outside the UK, such as at a mining crisis in South America a few years ago for example, our newspaper reporters not only remained quiet, they even disappeared from their desks during the occasion when all the victims were successfully rescued under a very meticulous operation.

 

 

So this is what I have observed: that when the ordinary plebs and the working classes suffer a crisis, then the media reports in a calm, business-like manner, one of several articles and not even making the headlines. But if the wealthier, upper or upper middle classes suffer the same sort of disaster, then both the Media and Government ministers throw themselves into an emotional turmoil, running around in circles in trying to find a solution to the crisis. On a Daily Mail Online website, there was a picture post showing all the posh homes lining the banks of the River Thames under threat of flooding. Maybe I might be wrong here, but so far I have not come across anything of this kind on the Media from up the more industrial, working class North.

 

So a boy receive a top-class education, attending an institution such as Eton, Harrow, Rugby, or Winchester public school, and graduates in readiness for Oxbridge, where he collects a highly valued degree. Then into the world of work where his degree earns him a high income which, in turn, lays a deposit on an exclusive, expensive riverside property with stunning views. But as the river rises and flood his home, he sees the whole of his lifetime achievement go to pot, despite all the media attention he gets. This is a terrible evil. As he gets old, his health gives in, and he spends his last days in a nursing home before giving up the ghost. How very, very sad and pathetic. He leaves nothing but his name, his date of birth and of his death etched on his tombstone, and nobody remembers him, save his family. The world simply moves on. Anyone passing his tombstone and reading his epitaph will not have a clue on how he looked, let alone how he acted in life. 

 

Am I being cynical? Maybe so, maybe not. But these ideas are not my own. King Solomon had already observed very similar things and recorded them. That includes class bias, which some readers might have come to believe I have an obsession with. Yet Solomon also wrote:

 

I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom which greatly impressed me:

There was once a small city with just a few people in it. And a powerful king came upon it, surrounded it and built huge siegeworks against it.

Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city out of wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man.

So I said, "Wisdom is better than strength."

But the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heeded.

Ecclesiastes 9:13-16.

 

Oh, how we British, who claim that our Constitution is based on the Bible, yet follow the very same folly as those inhabitants in that city which was saved by the wisdom of the poor man. Maybe if I had titled this page Christian Thoughts: By Dr. F. Blasi M.D.- I would have a much wider audience of readers! Even if all my words were exactly the same, I was tempted, at one point, to title myself Dr. - just to see what might have happened. But God would never be glorified by deception.

 

Ecclesiastes is about daily life under the sun, without God, with the grave and judgement awaiting all. Without God, life is indeed meaningless, a hopeless folly. But, and yes praise God, there is a but, through faith in Jesus Christ there is hope - eternal life given freely to all who believe. That is good news. And this is the reason why I have placed the folly of life through the present flood crisis on the same par as Solomon's writings. We British may with stoicism face up to the disaster, and draw up plans on how to deal with it. But that is where the problem lies. The victims keep a stiff upper lip, count the cost of his loss, and attempt to move on without falling on his knees and calling on God for mercy. Given the right instructions on faith in Jesus Christ Resurrected, this soul would receive something much more worthy of value than mere restoration of his home and possessions. A heavenly home, glorious, eternal, without money and without price - hence no mortgage or rent - reserved for him in Heaven. A home and property that will never ever be spoilt by any form of disaster.

 

It is something to be cheerful about, and the reason for a much greater hope. 

 

Daddy! Daddy! I Want...Give Me...

On July 3rd, 1997 I boarded a Boeing 747 at Sydney Airport, Australia, which took off around five-thirty in the evening, bound for Los Angeles, California.  After flying across the vast Pacific Ocean, featuring a splendid view of Hawaii basking in the morning sunshine, the 'plane landed safely at around one o'clock in the afternoon on the 3rd of July.

Yes, I can say that I have literally went back in time, landing in Los Angeles before I took off from Sydney, despite being suspended more than thirty thousand feet up in the air for the better part of thirteen and a half hours. But that is one of the strange anomalies of long-haul travel, as the airline was literally travelling faster than the rotation of the Earth on its axis, the crossing of the International Date Line meant I had to re-live the whole of the 3rd of July instead of landing at Los Angeles on the 4th as a result of flying through the night. This make travel so exciting! This, along with looking up at the Australian starry night and seeing the Southern Cross Constellation right above my head, or the brilliant display of stars seen from the bottom of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Not to mention the abundance of tropical vegetation - Mangrove trees in particular, growing out of the sea at high tide, a phenomenon totally unknown around the UK, Europe or the Mediterranean.

A Mangrove tree at Arlie Beach, Queensland, 1997.

Travel became something of an obsession, I think, since I first believed in Jesus Christ as Saviour. It was due to the fact that I started reading the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular said a great deal about the nation of Israel with its capital city, Jerusalem. So in 1976, after touring Italy for the last three years as a solo backpacker, I flew out to Israel to see the city the Bible had spoken so much about, together with a stay in Tiberias, on the lake of Galilee, that part of the world so familiar with Jesus Christ and his disciples. Gosh, how I wanted to see Jesus at the time, while walking on territory he once walked on. As a twenty-three year old, I was quite naive and not realised that not only was he already with me, but also lived in me, and in a sense, was guiding me along where he had been before his crucifixion. After visiting Israel in 1976, my desire to see the rest of the world, particularly California, began to increase, a lot of this to do with big screen and television movies.

God allowed me to fulfil my travel dreams, simply because he is my Father, as Jesus taught us to regard him. As my knowledge of the Bible began to accumulate, my curiosity over the city of Jerusalem began to grow, and I wanted so much to be there to see for myself. I can't remember if I specifically asked whether I can go, but even as such an immature Christian back then, God knew my heart and he had opened the door. Apparently, for one to backpack the Middle East was so unusual back in the mid-seventies, that after I returned, it became quite a sensation at my place of work, a precision engineering factory which employed around two hundred people, both in the offices and shop-floor.

One of the Scriptures I have become familiar with is found in Matthew 7:7-11, where Jesus instructs his followers that God is willing to give good things to those that ask him. Good things? In my younger days, to me good things meant travel, and loads of money to do this. As a single person, good things also meant meeting a girl of my dreams, marry and raise a family. However, a fast car was not on the agenda, as I have proved myself not to have taken to the steering wheel. But reading what Jesus was comparing here, he was saying that although our hearts are evil, as fathers we are keen to give good gifts to our children when they ask for them.

Perhaps life was very different during Jesus' day. Did children really ask their dads for bread, fish or an egg? According to Jesus and his followers, these seemed to have been the normal things to ask for, as these were the only goods that existed in a primitive agricultural world. Yet in our modern day, I don't ever record asking my parents for food such as meat and vegetables. Neither have I ever seen or heard about any children ask for bread or a fish. Sweets (candy) - yes, and often given as a reward for being good or obedient. As for toys, I have seen more than one child scream as he or she was pulled away by Mum from a toy shop at the shopping mall, but I have yet to see a child scream if he or she is pulled away from a grocery store. Also it can be hard work trying to persuade children to eat their Brussels sprouts, or greens in general. Rather than ask for these items, they are often the last  taken from the plate, if they leave the plate at all. And that despite that vegetables have a lot of nutritional goodness in them.

And that's the point. When I was young, if someone had placed a portion of boiled cabbage and a bar of chocolate in front of me, then told to choose which to eat, I would have chosen the chocolate, even if there was much more protein in the cabbage. Would I have chosen the chocolate because I was rebellious? Not at all. I would have chosen it simply because I was a child, and the taste of chocolate is far more enjoyable than the taste of the vegetable. Because of this, I would have regarded the chocolate as an undeserved treat, while eating the cabbage was more of an act of duty. A lesson may be learned here with a plate of biscuits (cookies). When my Mum had a packet of chocolate biscuits and some plain wheat ones too, what she did was to wrap the plain ones in silver foil, and present them in the same dish as the chocolate ones. The ruse always worked. The ones in the foil stood out as special, and taking one of those represented a special treat, and I felt the need to eat it despite the anticlimax.

And as a young Christian, even as an adult, I regarded the goodness of God in a very similar way. How come? Because in Matthew's version, Jesus says that the Father will give good things to those who asks him, while in Luke's version (11:9-13) he says that the father gives the Holy Spirit to those who asks him! Therefore as a young Christian, I found Matthew's version a whole lot more appealing. With it, I did ask the Father if I could travel around the world. I did ask the Father if I would ever cross the International Date Line sometime in my life. I did ask the Father if I would be married one day. I also asked the Father if I could qualify for a desk job in an office - not because this was always my aspiration, but because I would be better loved, respected and accepted by other people, particularly in my church. But asking for the Holy Spirit? Not quite so appealing, despite that he was the best I could have asked for.

According to my experience, there seems to be a parallel between growing up physically and growing up spiritually. In I Corinthians 3, Hebrews 5:13 and 1 Peter 2:2, the apostles wrote about babes in Christ, who were engaging in quarrelling and envying instead of bathing in the grace of God. And these Christians were adults, yet they were spiritual children. It seems to me that it's natural for the new believer to pass through a stage of spiritual childhood, and yet we have a Heavenly Father who understands this. There is absolutely nothing wrong in desiring things we see around us or what other people have gotten or have achieved. Travel was, and still is, my passion and God has granted me the ability to have travelled the world, and enough money to finance it. God has also granted that I would have a wife, a partner for life. But he did not grant me to have a cosy desk job at an office, neither did he allow me to fulfil my childhood ambition to become a medical doctor or journalist. Back in 1980, when I was out of a job, I wanted so much to climb out of my working class status and become middle class. If only I could land an office job, I would have bridged the divide.

At my old church, the person's worth was evaluated by level of education and professional occupation. And one who came out of university was held in higher regard and greater respect than the one who didn't. The graduate found it easier to make friends, was wooed by the girls and even the Elders gave the graduate greater responsibilities as house group leaders and teachers of Junior Church, and so on. As a result of all this, there were times that my personal relationship with God was under some strain, and even thought, erroneously, that God loved some people more than others and I was near the bottom of the pile. World travel became the antidote against this line of thinking.

It is as I grew older both physically and spiritually that I began to realise that Luke's version of what Jesus taught was far superior. Whether these two sayings were slightly different variations of the same speech delivered or whether he spoke on the same theme at different times and places, really that does not matter. For Jesus to say that the Holy Spirit is available just by the asking is the greatest demonstration of grace God can bestow upon a person. Furthermore, it is an unqualified statement, it does not respect the recipient's level of education or social status. As with travel, this always ends with a bout of "post holiday blues" - a deep feeling of melancholy as I walked into an empty, silent but oh-so-familiar apartment after so many nights spent at a lively, bustling hostel socialising and making friends in the far corner of the globe, with the distance from work and daily responsibilities to match. But asking for the Holy Spirit to flood my soul with himself is actually a lot more fulfilling, not only because the gift is eternal, but particularly when I go through a difficult patch wondering how long my window cleaning business will last, the growing threat of rivalry due to superior sales patter, better equipment which demands hundreds, if not thousands of pounds investment, and an estate of ageing clientele leaving me very unsure about the future.

I have found that trusting in God and asking for the Holy Spirit to fill me on a daily basis has not only helped along in facing an uncertain future, but on the positive scale, has given me patience in dealing with difficult clients, to be gentle and accommodating when others poses levels of difficulty. And I give credit to the power of God in my life, a Saviour who is fully capable in renewing a sinner's heart. A long backpacking holiday, or even a sabbatical, may be an exciting idea but also a return ticket is included in the package. Not so with the seal and guarantee of eternal life. No return ticket there! Realising that asking the Father for the Holy Spirit is equivalent to a child choosing the cabbage instead of the chocolate, to walk into a clothes shop on a cold day instead of the toy shop, or for that matter, if a choice between a pretty picture postcard or a £20 note was presented, the child choosing the money above the postcard, despite that the card is far more prettier.

I believe that God's wish is to bless us. I don't believe that God is reluctant to bestow material blessings, which includes the opportunity to travel. After all, wasn't Abraham rich? And so was Job? And one of the richest men who had ever lived was King Solomon. Never mind that he erred in later life. Solomon was bestowed with a supernatural wisdom which could have only come from the Spirit of God, and was particularly loved by God at his birth.

King Solomon's splendour. 

God has blessed me richly with a wife and a nice home, two computers, a photo library of travel experiences, and niceties which enhances the pleasantness of being at home. But the best gift God has given me is salvation and having not just having the Holy Spirit dwell in me, but all of the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit taking delight in making me their home.