It was a wound that would not heal. I always knew that my father preferred my brother to me. I worked hard to win his favor and stayed close to help him, but my brother was always the one he wanted to see and when he returned from whatever venture had taken him from home, my father greeted him with great joy and never reproached him.
What angered me was that Father did not think he was cutting me out but assumed when he left his wealth to Jacob that he would share it with me. It would have been useful to add that to my estate and I could have expanded my home and farmland.
Teacher
These thoughts were running through my mind even when I listened to the Teacher that day. Here was a man with wisdom and authority who would understand my point, so I called out “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”
The Teacher turned and looked at me and said.
‘Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’
And then he told us a story. He told us about a farmer who prospered so well that he was able to stop up his goods in massive barns and thus provide for himself for years to come. He settled down, telling himself to
‘Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’
A murmur went through the crowd, all of us guessing that disaster would follow that idea. How could the man be so foolish? As we feared the man did not even live to see another day and the Lord God challenged him regarding what would come of his wealth.
The things you have prepared, whose will they be?
I thought of all I had achieved and saw a time when I can no longer enjoy my goods or even decide who to gift them to. All my labor will be wasted. I imagined myself struck down like that man and I could not take even one item of all my wealth into the darkness with me. My property would be the divided out and my name forgotten.
Illusion
‘ … those who store up treasures’
I saw the futility of my efforts, saw that my wealth is an illusion, an illusion that we fall prey to over and over. We are confronted by death all the time, but we do not believe that it will ever come to us. The words of the psalm returned to my mind,
“You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.” (Ps. 90:5-6)
I saw that I had been looking through a veil. With my vision distorted by this self-deception I was eaten up by greed. I walked away from the crowd, sat down beneath a tree and closed my eye. Then I saw the face of the Teacher and then, only then, could I see truth before my eyes. I gazed into his eyes and saw Truth and I called out to him ‘You Lord, you are my inheritance.’
A burden was lifted from me … from that moment I turned around and set out on a new path.
