“Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
— Luke 12:15
Rockefeller, at the height of one of the great fortunes in American history, was asked how much money is enough. His answer echoes through the centuries because it is so relentlessly honest: “Just a little more.” That is the voice of covetousness. It is never satisfied. It gets what it wanted and immediately recalibrates to want the next thing. It is a hunger that more food only inflames.
Jesus told a story about a farmer who had so much that he tore down his barns and built bigger ones to store his surplus. And the man leaned back and said: eat, drink, and be merry. Life is good. And God said to him: Fool. Tonight your soul is required of you. And what you have accumulated, who will it belong to then? Jesus named him a fool not because he was successful, but because he had organized his life around the accumulation of things that cannot accompany him past the last breath.
I spent years in West Palm Beach, Florida, looking out my office window across the Intracoastal toward Palm Beach, one of the most concentrated gatherings of wealth on the planet. Rolls-Royces on Worth Avenue. Mansions lining the ocean. People who had more than most will ever dream of. And time after time I sat with those people and helped them put their lives back together, because the wealth had not delivered what they expected. It complicated things. It enabled things that should not have been enabled. The appetite grew with the feeding, and satisfaction retreated further every year.
Things are wonderful servants and terrible masters. The person who possesses things without being possessed by them has learned the secret. The person who holds everything loosely, as a steward rather than an owner, has found what the rich young ruler could not find: freedom. He walked away from Jesus sorrowful because he had great possessions. What actually happened is that his possessions had him.
Let go of the grip. Hold it all loosely. And let the God who owns everything be the one who decides what you need.
THINGS ARE WONDERFUL SERVANTS AND TERRIBLE MASTERS. HOLD THEM LOOSELY.
