Rich Toward God

The Treasure

This closes the parable of the rich fool, a man who had accumulated abundant harvest and built larger barns to store it, planning years of ease ahead, only to have his life required that very night, his careful accumulation rendered instantly irrelevant by death he had not planned for at all.

Notice the specific diagnosis given for his folly: layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. His actual failure was not accumulation itself, but the exclusive direction of that accumulation, entirely for himself, with no corresponding richness toward God, no generosity or stewardship oriented beyond his own private security and comfort.

This is worth examining honestly against your own accumulation, whatever form it currently takes. Not whether accumulation itself is wrong, this parable does not condemn the harvest or the barns as inherently sinful, but whether that accumulation is oriented exclusively toward yourself, or whether it includes genuine richness toward God as well.

Consider today one way your own accumulation could be redirected, even partially, toward richness toward God, not merely toward your own private security and comfort. This parable’s warning is not against having resources, but against having them entirely, exclusively, for yourself alone.