Fifty-Pound Note

This year, for the first time in my life, I owned a fifty-pound banknote. Sadly, fifty pounds is now worth significantly less than it used to, but notices which fussy shopkeepers affix to their tills declining such large bank notes were now, I was slightly pleased to reflect, addressed to me.

Unfortunately, I was required to pay a tradesman working on my house a quantity of cash, upon which I am sure he cheerfully paid the commensurate income tax to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. So having received it one week, I lost it the next. And so all wealth: what takes a lifetime’s hard work and skilful acquisition may, and will, be lost in an instant.

Will you set your eyes on that which is not?

For riches certainly make themselves wings;

They fly away like an eagle toward heaven.

Proverbs 23:5, New King James Version