I had to laugh at myself yesterday as I thought about the changes we go through in life… I remember as at age 10 or 11 I got a bicycle. I washed and polished that bicycle. I saved money for accessories like plastic streamers on the handle bars or simple things like placing a playing card on the frame with a clothespin so that it made the sound of a motor (to my young ears).
About age 16 I graduated to the automobile which totally captured the imagination of they teens of our age. We had “baby moon” hubcaps, chrome wheels, fuzzy dice, chrome tailpipe extensions and many other things. I think now they call it “pimping your ride,” but I may behind times in that term. We would gather together and wash and shine our cars as a group. We talked for hours about where we wanted to travel and how “neat” it would be.
I now use a cane due to a recent injury and in a small way I collect canes as does my son Kirk. I have a hand made cane that one of my great uncles made and several years ago I bought one of my favorites, a cane fashioned from a crooked tree branch. I have talked with other collectors and one of my friends has a project he is working on carving intricate designs on a large cane.
Well, I decided that maybe I would like to “pimp my cane”! I had an idea and went with Melody to Hobby Lobby and we bought a couple of very inexpensive doodads to put on my cane. I was standing there in the Hobby Lobby and started laughing. Melody said, “What the matter?” I told her I was just hit by the foolishness of the changes we go through in life. From a bicycle to a car to a cane and I am still tying to make it special.
Now as I thought about that I wondered how much I was like the man in the parable told by Jesus, who decided to build a bigger barn in Luke 12. In Luke 12:15 Jesus said, “And He said to them, Watch and keep yourselves from covetousness. For a man’s life is not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.”
Jesus went on to tell of the folly of a man who was only concerned about gaining more things. He ended the story by saying, “But God said to him, Fool! This night your soul shall be required of you, then whose shall be those things which you have prepared?
So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:20-21).
Whether it is a bicycle, a car or a cane, perhaps a house or clothes or jewelry, no matter what it might be we are always faced with the truth of the old saying, “you really can’t take it with you.” What are you holding onto that may keep you out of heaven, what is in our life that can cause us to one day be called, “you fool” as we stand before God?
