He finished his plans the same night God told him he was dying.
📖Based on Luke 12:20
The land of a rich man produced plentifully.
He thought to himself: What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?
He said: I will do this.
I will tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I will store all my grain and my goods.
And I will say to my soul: Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.
Relax, eat, drink, be merry.
God said to him: Fool.
This night your soul is required of you.
And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?
So is the one who lays up treasure for himself.
And is not rich toward God.
The conversation in the parable is between the man and himself.
What shall I do. I will do this. I will say to my soul.
Four times the word I.
His plans involved no one else.
No accounting for what his community might need.
No thought of the poor.
No acknowledgment that the abundance itself was a gift.
Just barns.
Bigger barns.
That night.
The plans were complete.
The night for their enactment never came.
He had spent his final hours planning for years he didn't have.
He was not a wicked man in the story.
He was not violent or unjust.
He was just a man who had been given much and planned to keep it.
Whose soul was required before the new barns were built.
And everything he had accumulated passed to someone else.
Whose it would be, God asked.
He offered no answer.
Because there is none.
Scripture — Luke 12:20
"But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?"
Reflection
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His plans were reasonable. His timeline was wrong. He made decisions for a future he didn't own.
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The word fool from God is not an insult — it is a category. The fool in Proverbs lives as if there is no God. This man planned as if he would live forever.