At our Tuesday morning Free Store conversation we talked about Jesus' parable in Luke 12, "The Land of a Rich Man." The story is about a man whose land produces a mega harvest. The harvest is so huge that it presents a real problem so the owner has to figure out what to do with the excess. Basically the guy decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones to store the excess produce. He proceeds to imagine that he will live comfortably on the surplus for the remainder of his happy life. At this point God intervenes and calls the guy a "fool" since he will die that very night.
We started the conversation by talking a bit about why the man in the story didn't just add on to his existing barns rather than tearing down the old and building new ones. George said that he must have had to "pay a lot of people to help him work it." Someone said that maybe the old barns were ugly and he wanted some new barns to look at which made us laugh. We agreed that building new structures was quite extravagant which meant that the harvest must have been way beyond normal. This led us to talk about what we do when we have extra money or when we have more than we need. Rick said that at one time in his life he had bought a Benelli Shotgun which had cost him thousands of dollars. Sheila told us that she and her ex-husband had purchased Harley Davidson Indian motorcycles at which George said he would "love to see her setting on that thing" which made us laugh.
At this point we talked about how easy it is to get caught up in spending all of what we have only on ourselves. Someone asked the question, "Why does God bless us?" And our new friend Andrew said, "To see what you will do with it." Our friend Donald seemed to like this and said loudly, "You can't take it with you" which made us laugh.
We thought it was ironic that on the last day of his life the man in story was spending his dwindling time planning his non-existent future. This led us to talk a bit about how life is fragile and there is no guarantee that we will live to see tomorrow. Someone mentioned that Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers, had died this week at age 57. At this another friend told us about a Nickelback song called "If Today Was Your Last Day" about living each day of your life as if it was your last day.
As the conversation moved to a conclusion someone brought up that the rich guy in the story didn't share the good news with a single other person and didn't even offer a little prayer of thanks to God for it. It was clear that the man was more than a little self-obsessed with his own comfort and security. We wondered if in spite of the abundance of stuff that he owned if he might not have been a lonely man. George said, "TV is all right but you need a warm body" which made us laugh. Rick mentioned the Tom Hanks movie Castaway where the guy paints a face on the volleyball and talks to it. At this George told us about doing time in prison and said that "just a letter" (and after a short pause with a twinkle in his eye) "and a $10 money order" could make his day and put a smile on his face (and on ours as well).
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