Daily Reading Reflection: Luke 12:13-21

"'And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drinkg, be merry'. But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'" Luke 12:19-20

This parable is a brilliant one. It draws you in and gives you a conclusion which is satisfying because of its reversal of power. But then it's true brilliance comes in the moment when you realize how often you find yourself in the person who is receiving his comeuppance in the story.

In this parable Jesus tells a story about a man who harvests a bountiful crop from his fields. When he decides what to do with his crop, he says "I will build more barns so I can be more secure". But later that same night he dies and all his striving for wealth is ultimately for nothing. Obviously we can look at this parable and see that it speaks to those who would choose to hoard up their material wealth instead of doing something about it. This whole stretch in Luke is talking about thinking in longer terms than simply the here and now. This refrain of "build more barns" is a line which I often repeat to myself when I hear of people hoarding wealth, of rigging their inheritance to their children in order to avoid giving anything up, when I think about wealthy people who don't tip their service-workers.

But the parable applies to anyone. The point of the story is that ultimately material wealth is fleeting when placed outside its proper perspective. God gives all things as a gift. When we decide to hoard those gifts for ourselves instead of spreading them about, they become a useless lump. It's like manure. When you are farming, spreading manure on your field is a great way to enrich all of your soil and help to grow more in the future. But if you pile it up in one place it's useless and just ends up stinking.

That's what I think about when I read this story. How are we building more barns? Where can we resist this urge and look at life with a more complete picture?