One of Job’s complaints, found in 30:15, was that “My prosperity has passed away like a cloud.” There are a number of great word pictures in the book of Job, and this is one of them. He says that prosperity is like a “cloud”, which is needed reminder for many of us.

Job said that his prosperity had “passed away like a cloud.” He had once been rich in every measurable way. Chapter 1:3 says “His possessions also were 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants; and that man was the greatest of all the men of the east.” He had been extremely rich! But his earthly riches did not last. The second part of Job Chapter 1 tells how he was stripped of all his wealth in one calamitous day. All that he possessed “passed away like a cloud.”

Job’s experience should instruct us. Prosperity can be fleeting, thus we must not put our hope and trust in it. Thank God for it when it comes, and enjoy it and be a good steward of it while you have it — but don’t TRUST it. It may not always be there — even for godly people, as Job shows us. He was not stripped of his prosperity because he was not a godly man, but in fact, precisely because he WAS! (1:8)

Job reminds us that prosperity cannot be trusted, and that we should put our ultimate hope and trust and glory in GOD, who unlike the “cloud” of prosperity, will never leave you nor forsake you.