In Good TimeSample

Time’s Foolishness

When the legendary singer Aretha Franklin died in 2018, her estate was valued at $80 million dollars. At the time, her family assumed she had no will. But in the months that followed her death, several handwritten documents were found, leading to hostility between her sons and a public trial.

Inheritance disputes often make headlines. In today’s suggested reading, Jesus is asked to settle one such argument. “Make my brother share with me!” a man pleads. But rather than play judge, Jesus answers with a parable. A man had been successful in his career. His retirement account was padded, his 401K fat. He counted on time to retire to Florida and “relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” But the man’s life was cut short, and death came for his dreams.

We could imagine Jesus’s story as a simple moral lesson: don’t be greedy. It’s certainly true that this man’s greed cost him his soul, as Jesus put it. He failed to see there was more to life than the short-lived pleasure of owning things. When he finally realized his foolishness, it was too late to choose differently.

But the Bible isn’t just a handbook on human ethics. It tells us what’s true about the world. As the late Dallas Willard once put it, the Bible turns an upside-down world right-side up. In this case, Jesus is teaching people the wisdom for telling true time. Time isn’t meant to be solely dedicated to to-do lists and bucket lists.

Time is both far longer—and far shorter than we’re taught to imagine. What’s clear from this story is that we’re not in control of time. We don’t decide the length of our lives, their relative health or prosperity. And though earthly life is short, beyond death, time unfurls like an infinitely long ribbon. YOLO is a myth. Eternity stretches beyond view, and its end we cannot grasp.

It’s the telling of long, eternal time, Jesus says, that’s necessary for learning how to live well today. Proper time-telling will help us answer: what really matters now, and what doesn’t? What’s worth treasuring, and what isn’t?

To tell the right kind of time is a step toward living our lives rightly. We begin to see that God is owed every part of our lives; that invested in him, our treasure is never lost.