In this season, let the barns stand or fall; your life is hidden in Christ.
One of the multitude said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” He said to them, “Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man’s life doesn’t consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses.” He spoke a parable to them, saying, “The ground of a certain rich man produced abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What will I do, because I don’t have room to store my crops?’ He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” ’ “But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
There is a particular tiredness in trying to keep yourself safe by keeping things close. The rich man in the parable did not begin with greed; he began with a reasonable question, 'What will I do?' and then answered it by making his soul a storage problem.
Notice how he speaks to himself. He pulls down old barns, builds bigger ones, and then turns to his own soul as if it were a silo: 'Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' He does not ask what his soul longs for. He tells it what it owns. There is a strange loneliness in that: a man standing in a courtyard of new timber, talking to a soul he has mistaken for a pantry.
Jesus names the error gently: life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Your soul is not a barn to be filled; it is a life to be given. The Father calls you to be rich toward God, which is not a mood or a mantra but a location—your life hidden in Christ, whose body was broken so that no storehouse would ever need to hold you.
Your soul is not a barn to be filled; it is a life to be given.
Lord Jesus, You were stripped of everything and yet lost nothing. Untangle my soul from my storehouses. Teach me to receive my life from Your hand rather than from my inventory, and let the barns stand or fall without taking my worth with them. Amen.
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