Hope for your financial life and beyond

Key Differences in the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders

Every builder knows you need a strong foundation to support a house. Well, accept one builder described in the Biblical parable of the wise and foolish builders. He could have made a better choice and taken a Construction 101 class. More about that in a moment.

parable of the wise and foolish buildersWhat makes a solid foundation?  A concrete slab works. So does a poured basement wall or concrete blocks placed on a footer.

On the other hand, building a house that rests on gravel won’t work in the long run. Dirt would be even less sturdy. A house built on sand would have no chance.

No one would ever conceive of building a house on something as unstable and shifty as sand. Without a solid foundation, the ground would buckle under the weight of the house. The slightest storm would wash away the sand and cause the house to crumble.

Ironically, we do this all the time. Not with a real house structure though. We do it with something way more valuable – our lives. We construct a life on all kinds of foundations that have no chance of supporting us in the long run.

Jesus told an epic parable about a wise builder and a foolish builder that highlights this issue. They both built their house differently. And wow…did they ever have different outcomes!

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How to Eat, Drink and Be Merry the Right Way (Luke 12:13-21)

Hidden Nuggets Series #98 – “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink and be merry.” – Luke 12:19

eat drink and be merry“Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” is a popular refrain you may have felt or expressed at some point in your life. If you are like me maybe you said it as a joke when you were downing a pint of ice cream swirled with chocolate sauce. As some in recent years have expressed, “You only live once, right?”

Truth is there is great seriousness in the statement and the consequences of adopting this attitude are serious.

There are two basic elements to the “eat, drink and be merry” philosophy towards life:

1) we are all going to die, sooner rather than later and…

2) since #1 is true, then we should live for the moment, enjoying whatever pleasures we can.

But the issue goes even deeper than those two concepts. When we opt for the eat, drink and be merry philosophy we are choosing laziness, neglect of our responsibilities and a forfeiture of the future. We are resting on what we have accomplished and counting on that to sustain us indefinitely.

You may not know the phrase has its origins in the Bible, taken from a story Jesus told of a rich fool.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

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