Jump Start # 929
Luke 12:19 “And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”
Our passage today comes from the parable of the rich farmer. Jesus used this parable to reply to someone’s demand for Jesus to get involved in settling a family inheritance dispute. Jesus would not do that. That is not why He came. That conversation followed a warning about greed and abundance. Life does not consist of abundance is the principle that Jesus was illustrating with this parable of the rich farmer.
The farmer in this parable had many good things going for him. First, he was rich. Many farmers are not. Many struggle. Weather dictates the success in farming and no one can predict nor control the weather. Not only was he rich, he had future plans. He was planning on expanding. Larger barns. Larger barns are needed for more bountiful harvests. He was even planning to slow down and retire. Our verse states that he was going to “take your ease.” there isn’t a lot of ease in farming. Up early. Working hard all day. That every expression implied that he was just about to the point that he was going to retire. Farming had been good to him.
The parable takes a horrible twist when he died suddenly that night. He hadn’t calculated that. He didn’t see death in his future. In the parable he is called a fool. The word “fool” is the harshest word God ever uses. It’s not because he was rich, successful or planning. It’s because he failed to include God. Long before this the Psalmist declared, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” This rich farmer lived that way. He may have known that there is a God, but he didn’t act that way. He lived as if he was in control of things, he wasn’t. He lived as if he was always going to have a future to build barns, he didn’t.
Our verse today, uses a very interesting expression. It says, “I will say to my soul, “Soul…” We do not talk that way. We talk to ourselves. We sing to ourselves. We think out loud. We read out loud. We say that we are thinking. The Bible uses the concept of meditating. Rarely, if ever, do we hear, “I will say to my soul…” Our soul and ourselves are so intertwined that you cannot separate them. You can’t leave your soul in bed and the rest of you go off to work or school. That doesn’t happen. That can’t happen. There is no separation. One affects the other. Our soul affects our behavior. Our behavior affects our soul. We feed our soul, spiritually. We strengthen our soul spiritually. Our soul lives after our bodies die.
It might be good if once in a while we talked to our soul. Our soul is who we are. It defines us. A conversation with our self or our soul might help us keep our priorities in line. It may connect us to what is important in life. It may reveal a weakness, as this farmer would have noticed had he been paying attention spiritually.
Greed, like lust, like most addictions, creates tunnel vision. It’s all a person can see, think about and talk about. They become obsessed. It takes over their life. Nothing else seems to matter. Greed is not stuff, but it’s that desire or wanting of stuff. It thinks that a person will be more happy with more or bigger or newer things. It defines things by labels. The name of a suit, sunglasses, brand of car, watch, shoes impresses many people. I’ve found that a name of a designer, who I have never heard of before, and who I can’t even pronounce, generally makes things more expensive. It’s a show off type of thing. A person will say, “I’m wearing Mr. Big Italian designer watch.” Some would say, “Ohh,” because they are impressed. The most important thing, does that watch tell the time!
The rich farmer had a talk with his soul. They talked about the wrong things. The conversation with his soul didn’t go well. He convinced himself that he was on the right path, doing the right things and had thought it all out. WRONG. He forgot God. He failed to thank God for the kind weather that made him successful. He failed to ask God for his plans and wishes. He certainly failed to include, “Thy will be done.” He wasn’t interested in God’s will, but his will. This wasn’t about what God wanted, but what he wanted. This wasn’t about God’s glory, but his ease, retirement and comfort. That’s what greed will do for you. It’s a faulty GPS. It’s a broken compass. It sends us down the wrong path and that path is always away from God. Greed doesn’t lead a person to God. It always takes a person away from God. Greed doesn’t make us a kinder servant, like Jesus would like us to be. Instead it makes us grumpy, stingy and selfish. Greed hordes. Greed takes.
When a person talks to their soul, they ought to listen to what they are saying. Do you hear yourself? What are you saying?
The farmer died. He died suddenly. He died not realizing that he no longer had a future here. He died without giving any thought to who will have his barns after he was gone. He died and never made a difference for anyone. He died without walking with God.
Maybe it would do us all well to turn off the car radio and talk to our own soul. That little talk may tell you that you need to step it up with the Lord. It may tell you that your attitude is out of line and needs some adjusting. It may tell you that your are becoming grumpy and selfish. It may make you thankful that you even have today. It may make you thankful that you have a family, a job and a Lord that loves you.
Do not think that talking to your soul is as good as or can replace talking to the Lord. Prayer and talking to your soul can be about the same things, the difference is that one is talking to self and the other is talking to the God of Heaven and Earth. We are limited in what we can do, what we know and what we see. God is not. God can open doors that no one can. God can do what we cannot not. Pray to God—talk to your soul. Do them both. Connect the two together. One will help with the other.
“I will say to my soul…”
Roger