It's a tough one for me too Greg. If I believe that God plays a role in my success in earthly things, then I must believe he's playing a role in others success as well. We call them blessings and we are thankful for them. But Tony points out that these earthly blessings are never important to God's plan. Furthermore a common theme of Jesus teaching was of the dangers of money. It's interesting to me that money and wealth seem to be tied to a lot of things are consistent with godly character but obviously not exclusive to people with godly character. Money today, mostly representsa person's ability to produce something of value to society. God values us equally and completely independent of what we produce, and teaches us to do the same. All that being said, God can and does provide for us sometimes. He has provided us with everything we have on this earth. And sometimes he may physically give us manna but my guess and humble opinion is that most of the time he lets our choices and the choices of others before us and around us to determine our prosperity.