Imagine yourself standing in the checkout line. The fluorescent lights hum a tune of quiet desperation. Your cart holds the generic brands, the careful choices, and the weight of a budget stretched thin. And then you see him. He’s laughing, tossing a few premium, unnecessary items onto the conveyor belt. You know his name. You know his reputation. You know the shortcuts he’s taken, the corners he’s cut, and the vows he’s broken without a second thought.
And there he is. Not a care in the world. Prospering.
Then a quiet question, more felt than formed, rises from deep behind your ribs: What’s the point of all my trying?
It’s an old question, a feeling that the game is rigged, that the rules you’ve clung to are a fool’s errand, and that the real, tangible, can-pay-the-bills rewards are being handed to everyone but you.
What if we’ve been reading the map all wrong?
We are, all of us, cursed with a myopic view of history. We see in snapshots. We judge a life by its current chapter, a story by its most recent paragraph. We saw the lavish party next door but weren’t there for the hollow, lonely silence that followed once the guests left. We saw the new car in the driveway, but didn’t hear the arguments about how to pay for it.
Our vision is trapped in the now. And the now is a terrible, deceptive measure of true prosperity.
We forget that the universe operates on a different clock—a divine chronology in which a thousand years are but a day. We’re frantic, trying to read the entire novel from the single page we have open. It’s no wonder the story makes no sense.
The psalmist Asaph knew this feeling intimately. He writes in Psalm 73:3-5, 12 with a raw envy that feels shockingly modern: “For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men... Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.”
He’s not some stained-glass saint. He’s a man. A tired, confused, frustrated man. He’s doing the “right” thing and feels falling behind. Sound familiar?
His honesty is a gift to us. It permits us to admit our own confusion. To name the dissonance. It’s the first step out of the trap.
Their lives look so… green, lush, full, and unburdened by the constant internal audit of conscience. That’s the illusion. The prosperity of the seemingly carefree is often just a deeper, more profound poverty dressed in finer clothes.
Think of it this way. A tree planted in rich, easy soil may shoot up quickly. Its growth is rapid and impressive, a testament to its immediate environment. But it has no reason to dig deep. Its roots are shallow, content with the surface-level nutrients. Then the drought comes. The winds. The first real test.
Now consider the tree on the rocky hillside. Its growth is a struggle. It’s slower. It’s gnarled and twisted from constantly pressing against resistance. It has to dig its roots deep, past the rock, in a desperate search for a hidden water source. It doesn’t look as prosperous. Not by a long shot.
But which tree survives the storm?
The seeming prosperity of the wicked is often just the shallow soil of immediate gratification. It’s a foundation of sand. It looks good until the tide comes in. And the tide always, always comes in.
Never forget the words in Psalm 1:6 that say, “For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” This isn’t a threat. It’s a sobering, natural law. A life built on a crumbling foundation will, inevitably, crumble. The timeline is not ours to set.
We measure in currencies they understand: dollars, likes, square footage, and social capital. But the whole economy of the soul operates on a different exchange rate.
And the real prosperity is being forged in you right now, in your quiet, unseen struggles.
That knot in your stomach when you choose integrity over an easy lie. That’s a dividend. After a long day of doing the right, hard thing, that weary sigh is an investment. The ability to look at yourself in the mirror without flinching—that, my dear believers, is a wealth that any market crash cannot devalue.
I need you to understand that the world sees your smaller bank account and is blind to the vast interior fortress you are building stone by stone.
But you are cultivating a strength they know nothing about. A peace that operates independently of external circumstances. You are learning the language of a different kingdom, where the last are first and the meek inherit the earth. It feels upside down because we’ve been standing on our heads.
The man who gains the world but loses his soul didn’t just make a bad trade. He traded a diamond for a glittering piece of glass. He just hasn’t tried to press it against anything truly hard yet.
Here is the heart of it: We are not the authors of our own stories. We are characters in a Grand Narrative. The Author has a habit of taking what looks like defeat and rewriting it as the setup for a glorious, unexpected redemption.
We see Joseph in the pit. We see David fleeing through the desert. We see Daniel in the lion’s den. We see the Messiah on a cross. The ultimate picture of failure. The righteous man, crushed. The sinner, Barabbas, goes free. Talk about the prosperity of the wicked.
But the story wasn’t over.
The pit was a path to the palace. The desert forged a king. The den silenced the accusers. The cross… became empty.
The arc of the moral universe is long, the proverb says, but it bends toward justice. For us, it’s more personal. The arc of a faithful life is long and bends toward a profound, unshakable wholeness that the world can neither give nor take away.
So, know this. Your current chapter is not the conclusion. The seeming prosperity of others is not the final edit. You are in the middle of the sentence. Therefore, wait for the period.
We don’t suppress the question. We sanctify it. We let it lead us to a deeper trust, not bitterness.
We recalibrate our vision. We intentionally look for the deeper prosperity—the strength of character, the peace of mind, the love in our homes—and learn to count it as the real treasure.
Most importantly, we remember that we are not alone in asking. We are in a long line of weary travelers who looked at the green grass on the other side and wondered. Until they got close enough to see it was Astroturf.
The point of your trying was never the world’s reward. It was the forging of a soul that can carry a weight of glory you can’t yet imagine.
The reward for playing the long game isn’t just winning. Along the way, it's becoming the kind of person who can truly enjoy the win without it destroying you.
So let him make his easy purchase in the checkout line. You’re investing in something he can’t see, building on rock.
Your foundation is being tested right now so it can withstand the weight of what’s coming.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Karen Hatch