When I read Jesus’ admonishment when
He tells about the man with the great harvest who wanted to build barns to
store the extra grain in, I’m a bit surprised at first (Luke 12:13-21). Why is
this not good? After all, in the Old
Testament, Joseph saved his 11 brothers (in fact, all of Egypt) from a famine
by looking ahead and storing up grain! (Genesis 41:46-49)
But in this story, Jesus tells us that
God announces the man will die tonight, in spite of his careful planning. After reading the story again, I saw the line
that makes all the difference between to two occurrences: “That
is the way it works with the man who grows rich for himself instead of growing
rich in the sight of God." (Luke
12:15)
It’s not the barns. It’s not the grain. It’s that the man became unbalanced in his
life and the barns and grain took on too much emphasis. He thought he could manage his life on his
own, without God’s help.
We are God’s creation, His “handiwork,
created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance, that
we should live in them”. Our salvation isn’t our own doing, it’s God's
“gift,
not a reward for anything we have accomplished” (Ephesians 2:1-10). It’s hard for us to accept that we aren’t
doing anything to earn salvation. But we
aren’t. It’s a pure and simple gift of
God’s incredible love for us. It’s given
to us, not because we deserve it, but because “the LORD is God, he
made us, we belong to him, we are his people, the flock he shepherds” (Psalm 100:3). There’s absolutely nothing we can do on our
own in this world. Isn’t it nice to turn
over control of our lives to someone who loves us so much?
We could make our lives much easier on
ourselves if we could only let go of the control and turn it over to God. As hard as it seems sometimes, we need to keep
our focus, keep our balance, keep perspective.
The only thing we need to keep our eye on is our savior.
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