Then Jesus tells a story.

A farmer has a great year. So much so that he is out of storage. He has no place to put it all. He has to decide: what do I do with all this grain?

It’s a valid question, one that many of us face. We get a bonus, we get a raise. We get zucchini, we get tomatoes. We get a promotion, we get a bill paid off. We get more likes on Facebook, more ___ and we say, “What should I do with my stuff?”

The man makes what seems like a wise business decision. He can tear down his buildings and build new buildings. He can store more. He can give jobs to builders. What could be wrong?

What’s wrong is one little word in the story that Jesus tells.

“My.”

The man talks about my crops, my barns, my surplus. The assumption that the man makes is that the abundant crop is all his. It’s given to him, the man assumes, for his own comfort, for his own security.

“Take life easy,” Jesus quotes the man. “Eat, drink, and be merry.”

The choice that makes sense, particularly in our culture of individual success, is a choice that God wasn’t happy with.

“Fool”. That’s what God says. “Tonight your life will be demanded. What will happen to your stuff? What will happen to you?”

The demand in the middle of the night is not a made up thing. It’s a demand that we see in this building all the time.

• In the middle of the night, a couple days after the big birthday party, there is a heart attack.
• In the middle of success, there something goes wrong with our bodies.
• In the middle of the night, the week after retirement, my dad had his first stroke.

And we have to wrestle with our priorities.

It’s not that he was being judged with death for thinking about keeping everything and retiring.

Not at all. It’s that his death was going to show the folly of his choices.