What Am I ‘here after’?

An elderly man confided to a friend that he was planning to live to be one hundred. The friend replied, “I too would like to be one hundred. But how do you plan it?” “It’s quite simple,” the other man said, “all you need to do is live until you’re ninety-nine, and from then on be very careful.”

Well, as we all know, it’s not that simple. Some of us may have started being careful years ago, but we’re still vulnerable at any age. Every second of our lives we’re vulnerable. Most of us won’t reach ninety-nine, much less one hundred. And yet we carry on as though we’re going to live forever.

In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus tells a parable about a man who carried on in this manner, a man who planned ahead as though he were going to live forever. A wealthy man, he looked forward to a financially secure, worry-free future while ignoring his human situation of vulnerability: his…