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Why would God call someone a “fool?” A “fool” misses an opportunity. Let’s say I am an investor who spent a lifetime making meaningful, calculated risks and wise financial discussions that paid off over a long period of time. I’d die a rich man with a lot of money in the bank. After a few years, in the afterlife, I would decide to check up on my investments. I would look down to earth and see that my relatives blew all of the money on jewelry and boats. I would say “Instead of leaving the money in a bank, I could have used it to help people.” That is an example of a missed opportunity.
This is the reason why God calls the man in the parable a fool. In the parable, there is a guy who enjoys an enormously successful harvest. Then he then dies. Let us suppose that sometime after his death he wished to check out the successful harvest to find out what happened to his produce. He would see that field mice had eaten it. Once again, he had missed an opportunity.
I often like to change the details of a parable to give it a happy ending. So here is my version of the parable. There was a farmer who had a rich harvest. He said to himself, “Where am I going to put all of my food. My barns are not big enough, I know what I will do. My neighbor Joe, who has a potato farm, just lost his entire crop due to bugs. So I will fill up his empty barn so he has something to live on this year. In addition, the owner of the nearby general store told me that the shelves were empty in his food bank due to a great need. So I can take the extra food and fill the shelves. God gave me extra this year, so I can fill empty barns and empty shelves.”
Whenever God gives me anything, whether it is good health, great education, a birthday gift, or a generous donation to the Church, I tell God, “Thank you so much.” After I thank Him, I always hear Him say to me, “The gift is not for you. It is for you to use to help people.”
It is amazing that after all these years, we humans have no idea what it is like to die. The reason for this is because no one has ever come back from the dead to tell us what it is like. The only thing we know about death is that we lose everything we own. Death robs us of all of our possessions. True indeed–Jesus has risen from the dead. So we might think that He could tell us what it is like to die. But He never did. Instead, He has told us how to live!
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