Riches!

Riches!

Luke 12:15-21 NIV

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.

The story that backs up the verse above is one that reflects a wasted life. Here was a man whose ground was blessed by God to get a bountiful harvest. For someone who fully understands the input of God into a life, there will be no issue with giving credit to whom it is due. But not this man. Somehow, this man thought that the output he got was a function of the input he had made. Unfortunately, with God, there is no room for pride or a feeling of self-sufficiency. What a life! What a waste! What a loss of focus and a lack of priorities. The world has its standards- it measures success on numerical or quantifiable basis: how much money you have in your bank account; how many cars or houses you own; how much you pay for rent or school fees for the children. Life has become a comparative race, where everyone wants to be like the other person, not caring too much about how that other person came to be how he/she is. 

We measure ourselves mentally and physically, trying to outdo each other in displays of wealth, wisdom and power. We forget that, as someone once said, in paraphrase: the things that count cannot always be counted in terms of numbers, while what can be counted does not always count.

The story behind the verse above is a lesson in the right priorities: a man who planted crops got a rich harvest. He had no power over the seeds or their capacity to bear fruits. He could not determine beforehand which ones carried the potential of increase. He just planted all and waited. At the appointed time, the seeds bore fruits: fruits he had no control over, fruits he could not determine how they came about. Yet, he assumed total dominance over everything he could see. If you read the rest of the verses that followed, you find the word 'I' was used up to 5 times in those few verses. 

Where was the place of God or the place of the grace of God and his provision and provenance? Was there anything he had control over: the planting, the waiting period, the harvest? Could he determine the start or end of anything? One big lesson: we don't owe or hold anything, except that which God gives us grace to hold. We are nothing outside the grace and mercy of God, and we will do well to remember that constantly and regularly. All He gives us is in trust and there is nothing we have or hold that we can retain by our own power. All the glory for all we see or have must be returned to God, the owner of all things and the determiner of the destinies of men. May we never be so full of our own importance that we forget the important: God is the ultimate; not what we own or hold but who we know. God's time of favour is here.