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Grain, Barns, and God

But God said to him, ‘You fool!
This very night your life
will be demanded from you.
Then who will get what
you have prepared for yourself?’

Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, is among my favorite of his.

In the poem a traveler comes to diverging roads and needs to decide which to take.

One road doesn’t look as though it’s been used as much while the other looks well used, so the traveler ponders, which shall I take?

It’s difficult for the traveler to make a decision not knowing where each path leads.

The traveler makes a choice recognizing that in the future the choice may have been wrong, but it’s impossible to go back and change the choice.

This is he sense of the parable of the Rich Fool, which choice does one make?

Here’s a rich land owner with an abundance of whatever crop and so a choice must be made. The choice made is to build a larger barn to store more crops.

Celebrate! Eat, drink, and be merry!

This choice is made based on greed and without thought of any neighbor’s needs neglecting justice and the love of God.

The party ends abruptly when God says, “Fool! Your life will be taken tonight! Now what happens to your things?”

It’s too late to change your choices!

We are in the same position as the traveler and the rich farmer: making active choices.

We can choose to be “rich with barns” by accumulating possessions, wealth (think 401k’s) so retirement is a time to “eat, drink, and be merry”

Or we can choose to be rich toward God.

We can be rich toward God by loving generously and seeking God’s kingdom through acts of justice and mercy.


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