Daily Lesson for October 28, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 12

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully,17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Ugh, a family dispute over money. The worst!

A knucklehead son wants Jesus to help him get his knucklehead brother to give him a larger claim of their parent's inheritance. Sure, get the preacher involved. I'm sure he sees it God's way -- unless he sees it the other way.

Jesus is having no part of this nonsense. "Do I look like a judge?" he asks. "A mediator, an arbitrator -- a fool?

"No thank you. Never.  Ain't going there. Let me tell you a story instead."

The story goes like this:

A man has a bumper crop one year and decides he'll just store it all up.  Never mind that the Biblical word for storing it all up is hoarding. But heck, this guy doesn't have any friends anyways.  He's pretty much his own world. Check out how he talks. Talk reveals a lot. Nine times he uses the words "I" or "my" and not once "they" or "theirs". It's a first person possessive world for this guy. The best he can do is to talk to his own soul.

The barns are all full. The storehouse piled high. Now it's time to sit back and relax.  "Eat, drink, have some fun."

And then the kicker. Day one of retirement he kicks the bucket.

"And so," Jesus concludes his story, "all that stuff that was piled up, who's will it be now?"

And the answer dawns on us:

Probably his two knucklehead sons.

Sad to say, but I can't think of a truer story.