URC Daily Devotion Monday 10 February 2025

St Luke 12: 13 – 21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’  But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’  And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’  Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly.  And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.  And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”  But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

Reflection

Here’s a surprise. Jesus tells another of his parable stories – but this time God is given a walk-on part.

The other character, who seems to be all too human, has plenty to say for himself, though apparently only to himself. He has a problem to be solved, but he’s going to find the solution unaided. Talking to his neighbours might have led to a different conclusion: no doubt they’d have been quick to point out to him the knock-on effects on the wider community of his grandiose building project, and his decision to hold back his abundant harvest from the open market. But since he’s talking only to himself, the economic arguments have carried  all the weight.

So again we note Jesus’s keen insight and knowledge, not only of the ways of agribusiness, but also the ways of our human nature. We’re so liable to make even our own insignificant everyday decisions on the basis of our own comfort and self-enrichment. Matters like where and how we shop and how we spend our modest wealth can have consequences way beyond our immediate circle. As for today’s rich landowners and the burgeoning billionaires’ clubs, they might stop to listen to Jesus’s story too.

Because in the end, after all our self-justifying inner conversations, God has a word to say to us too. Fewer words than ours, but cutting to the heart of the matter. God, who I like to think knows each of us by name, is a bit harsh in his mode of address.  “You fool!” The Psalmist reckoned that the fool says in his heart “There is no God.” Which is rather the way the man in the story has been thinking and acting. Better be listening for God from the beginning, and things could turn out very differently!

Prayer

So often I’ve too much to say for myself
and too much to say to myself.
Help me, God, to widen the conversation
and to be listening for your voice
however disconcerting and unwelcome
it may sometimes prove.  Amen