I don’t know about you, but it’s getting harder and harder to get out of bed these days. I always find that in these waning days of the year, when the mornings are cooler (dare I say “colder?”), and there is less sunshine in the morning, I just want to pull up the covers and go back to bed when the alarm rings. That’s kind of how the year ebbs and flows. So in these days toward the end of the year, our thoughts naturally think of life and death, and the life to come. We approach All Soul’s Day, and Thanksgiving – which is the end of the harvest, – and Christmastime and New Year’s Eve, which makes us think about the end of the year.
We’ll notice, too, that the readings toward the end of the year start to make us look toward the end. The rich man in today’s Gospel parable would have done well to think of the end of things and to get his affairs in order. But he foolishly thought he would live forever, and prepared to enjoy his riches for years to com. Only those years were cut short and his life was required of him that very evening.
The moral of the story, so to speak, is the message we need to hear. We never know how many days will be given us, and so we must always be ready to meet our Lord and Savior. And what we have to be storing up is the riches that will endure in heaven. We must attend to our spiritual life, taking time for prayer and worship. We must attend to the needs of others, serving them as if they were Christ himself. We must live our days in joyful praise of the One who created us. We must be truly rich in what matters to God.