TIMOTHY
BERREY
BY
Caspar, my great grandfather, was a successful
farmer in southwestern Missouri. When he died in
1941, officials closed school the day he was buried.
People owed him money. In addition, he had given
a farm to each of his boys, money to each of his
girls, and still had enough for his widow to buy a
house in town. Yet now, when we drive through that
area, very little still belongs to him or his relatives.
Caspar laid up treasure on earth. We are not sure
how much he laid up in heaven.
In Luke 12:13–34, Jesus identifies two enemies of
laying up treasure in heaven, one in the story of
the rich fool and the second in the warning against
worry that follows. A careful reading of these two
paragraphs shows they belong together: repeated
references to life/soul (vv. 15, 20, 22–23), possessions
(vv. 14, 33), being rich toward God/treasure (vv. 21,
33–34), and the therefore that connects the two
(v. 22). Jesus’ point? Don’t let these two enemies keep
you from laying up treasure in your Father’s kingdom.
OBSTACLES
TO LAYING UP
COVETOUSNESS
The rich fool (God’s term for him), whose prosperity
has led him to think of his own earthly enjoyment
and pleasure for years to come, pictures the enemy
of covetousness. He has forgotten a fundamental
reality about life. His life does not consist in posses-
sions, even though he has an abundance of them
(v. 15), and his
life (“your soul,”
v. 20) will some-
day be required
of him by God.
Then Jesus asks,
whose will be
the things he has
prepared?
Rather than being rich for him-
self, he should have used his
wealth to lay up riches toward
God, the One who would ask
back the life He had given him.
When I think of the rich fool, I
think of the explosion of storage
units across America. By one estimate, the number
of self-storage unit buildings grew from 6,600 to
50,000 during the years 1984–2022. An estimated
90% of these are at capacity, but some 155,000
abandoned units are auctioned off every year. Do we
really need all the stuff we own—the stuff that does
not fit in our houses and the stuff we even forget
that we own? What if we were to use our wealth to
lay up unfailing treasure in our Father’s kingdom?