1 Timothy 6:6-10: in context

Paul hands Timothy a phrase worth memorizing: godliness with contentment is great gain. In a letter partly aimed at people who measured gain in money, he redefines the word. The truly profitable thing, the great gain, is not wealth but a godly life joined to contentment, the settled ability to be at peace with what one has. And he grounds it in a fact we all know and mostly ignore: we brought nothing into the world, and we can carry nothing out of it. Naked in, naked out. Given that, he says, if we have food and clothing, the basic necessities, we can be content with that. Contentment is not having everything; it is having enough and knowing it.

Then he draws the sharp line, and notice exactly where he draws it. The problem is not money itself, nor even having it. The problem is the craving. Those who are determined to be rich, he says, who want it, fall into a snare and into many foolish desires that plunge people into ruin, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and some, reaching for it, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. It is the desire, the reaching, the never-enough hunger, that ensnares and wounds. And that hunger is self-inflicted; Paul says they pierced themselves. The craving does not deliver the security it promises; it delivers sorrows, and by one's own hand.

That searches me more than a simple warning against money would, because I can tell myself I am not greedy while the craving hums along underneath, the quiet conviction that a little more would finally be enough, the reaching that never arrives. Paul says contentment with enough is the actual gain, and the endless wanting is a snare that pierces me with sorrows I bring on myself. Have I learned the great gain of being content with enough, or am I still caught in the wanting-more that Paul says leads people to pierce themselves through, and what would it take to call what I already have enough?