Luke: What are you building?

I am amazed at the number of “get rich quick” schemes there are and the number of people who risk everything they have to follow them.

By far the most common one of late is where you buy an investment property. Then you wait till its value is greater than the mortgage you have taken out. You then use this extra value to borrow more money to buy another investment property. Then you repeat the process with both properties in order to buy a third property and so on, and so on…

The couple on TV the other night were up to 12 properties after 10 years. (Of course nobody asked them if they felt guilty about driving first home buyers out of the market!) When would they stop? When would they be satisfied with what they had? I couldn’t help but see the similarity to Jesus’ parable.

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

16 And Jesus told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ‘
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with those who store up things for themselves but are not rich toward God.” Luke 12

When do we cross the line from sensible investment into greed? Sometimes it is obvious but often it is not.
But the interesting thing about Jesus’ teaching is at the end when he talks about being “rich toward God”.
What he is implying is that ambition to build up something is a good thing – when it is about God’s priorities.

And what would God have us build with our time energy and resources?
He would have us build up our love for God and neighbour into something vigorous, strong and resilient. Not something we do as a hobby in our spare time but something that gets our full attention – a love that we spend effort on improving.

Until the last century, it was thought that building your character and personality to be more Christlike was the ambitious work of a lifetime. Nowadays people think they can change who they are by changing their
outward image; clothes, hairstyle, car, neighbourhood, job, spouse, etc.

You can’t take wealth with you when you die like Jesus’ “fool” in the parable. But you do take yourself with you when you die. Will it be the best ‘you’ you can possibly be (with the Holy Spirit’s help)? This is the real wealth of the Kingdom of God; the people. Beautiful Christlike people passionately in love with God, people and one another.

Now there is something worth building! But like anything in life this cannot be achieved without ambition, effort and personal sacrifice. What ambitions to build and achieve hold your attention now? May you have ambitions to be “rich toward God”.

Graeme