Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Once upon a time, there was a wealthy landowner who wound up with more crops than he knew what to do with. His harvest was too big to fit in his existing barns, so he did the logical thing and started planning for expansion. He’d have the old barns torn down and bigger, better ones built in their place.

What’s more, once the harvest was gathered into those new barns, he was going to be living large. It was the kind of profit that a person could live off of for years. He started thinking ahead—he was going to take it easy, live the good life, and coast on his good fortune for a while.

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be required of you. Then who will own what you have accumulated?'” (Luke 12:20, BSB).

That’s always been a sobering parable for me. There’s so little warning for the rich man. He goes straight from the best profit he’s ever made to discovering it’s all going to be over before the next morning.

God’s pointed question reminds him that all the effort, all the planning, all the excess—it all amounts to nothing.

He’ll be gone. His stuff will go to someone else. And what was the point of any of it?

* * *

Let me show you a graph:

The values are irrelevant. What’s important here are the relative heights of the bars—specifically, that last one labeled “2024.”

This is a graph of all the views the Sabbath Thoughts blog has received since it launched in 2013. There’s a story behind each of those bars (I bet you can guess what years my kids were born just based on the graph alone!) but in 2023, I started making a concerted effort to “show up” consistently. I wanted to make sure there was a featured post promoted every week, even if it was an older one.

I didn’t always meet that goal, but I did try—and it’s pretty obvious from the graph that the effort made a difference. Sabbath Thoughts had a record number of views by the end of 2023, and I felt confident that if I worked harder at showing up, 2024 would be even better.

And it was. The effort paid off. By the end of August, 2024 was already the most-viewed year to date. I was excited to see how high that number could climb before the year was out.

The answer?

Not much farther at all.

Toward the end of September, the blog experienced a technical hiccup that ended with about a year and a half of data disappearing forever. That meant 40-some-odd posts, hundreds of email subscribers, and countless comments—poof. Gone in a moment.

Do you know what also disappeared in that moment?

The bigger, better barn I had been working on.

* * *

For a little while—and by “a little while,” I mean “a decade, off and on”—I’ve been working on revamping this website. Back when it launched in 2013, I grabbed a free layout, tweaked it a little bit, then got busy writing posts.

It did its job. I always had dreams of making it better—a little more polished, a little more intentional, a little more user-friendly—but I was hampered by a small little problem that I think some people would refer to as “a total lack of experience and competence.”

I’m no designer. I like to dip my toes in those waters every now and then, but I know enough to know I don’t really know what I’m doing. And I’m no coder, either. I know enough of that world to be dangerous, and that mostly to myself.

So progress moved at a pretty glacial pace. When I had time—which was hard enough to come by—I’d dabble with this and that behind the scenes, and then try and figure out why everything was broken and how exactly I’d done it.

It took a while, but eventually, it started to get somewhere I was relatively happy with. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel—all this tinkering was coalescing into something I could actually use. And now, at the end of Sabbath Thoughts’ best year ever, I was just months away from deploying a fancy new barn that would give everything a much-needed facelift.

At least, that was the plan. My plan.

But then—poof. That was gone in a moment, too.

* * *

For a little while, I felt like the rich man in Christ’s parable: a bountiful harvest, exciting new possibilities, ambitious plans, and then…

Nothing.

That was hard.

I sulked for a little while.

…Maybe longer than a little while.

The good news was that rebuilding was possible. I still had local copies of most of the posts and images, which meant I could recreate them manually. It was going to be a long, exhausting process—but possible.

But some things were gone gone. The comments people had left on the posts that had disappeared (I always enjoy reading those, and it’s sad to think that some just aren’t there anymore). The address of anyone who had signed up for the email list since February of 2023.

And of course, my barn. The site redesign. I’d have to redo that from scratch.

* * *

I think it’s possible to take the wrong lesson from the parable of the rich man and his barns.

We can read that and say, “The lesson here is, don’t ever get ambitious or God might take it all away.” But I don’t think that’s the point. I don’t think building barns is necessarily a bad thing.

Jesus ended his parable with this warning: “This is how it will be for anyone who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21, BSB). And the question God posed in the parable itself was, “Who will own what you have accumulated?”

What will you have when it’s all over?

The rich man had nothing because his sole focus was storing up more physical treasure for himself. But all of us have to face the reality that all of our physical endeavors will ultimately come to an end—at least as far as our role in them is concerned.

What will we have then?

At some point in my sulking over the state of my blog, I realized the answer to that question.

I’ve been doing Sabbath Thoughts, in some form or another, for around 18 years. And if every last trace of the blog disappeared overnight—if all the emails were deleted and the printed books vanished—if there was no remaining evidence that this little experiment had ever existed—I’d still have something important.

I’d have what I gained in the process.

I’ve written more than 300 Sabbath Thoughts. I started writing them—I still write them—as a way to learn. To study. To grow. And all that learning and growth doesn’t disappear just because a web server crashes. What I’ve gained from the process of studying and writing is mine—and I hope some of it is yours, too.

The things you’ve read, on this blog and elsewhere, even if they all disappear tomorrow—you’ve still read them. They’ve still impacted you, maybe even changed you.

The barn is superficial. I’m really glad I was able to give it a new coat of paint after all—but at the end of the day, it’s what’s in the barn that matters. And even then, it’s not the having or the possessing of the stuff inside that matters—it’s the process of working with it. That’s what changes us. That’s what survives when the stuff itself is gone.

“Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Luke 12:15).

What will you have when it’s all over?

* * *

It’s funny, because this is a lesson I already learned once before. Years ago, attending my church’s nine-month Bible program, someone stole my laptop out of my car.

I was two months from graduation. Seven months of notes—poof. Gone in a moment.

At least… the files were gone. I couldn’t open them up on a screen and look at them. But as the weeks and months went on, I realized so much of that time had survived in my mind. Losing the laptop didn’t mean losing what I’d learned.

Even when the barns were gone, much of the treasure I’d gathered—the experience itself—remained.

* * *

But enough about me. How about your barn? What are you filling it with—and what would you have if everything inside it vanished?

The woodworker who spends five decades practicing his craft doesn’t end up with only a mountain of carvings and furniture to show for his efforts. The painter ends up with more than a stack of paintings, and the gymnast ends up with more than a pile of medals.

Those are byproducts. In the process of filling their barns with these things, they gained skill and understanding and insight into their craft.

And what does the Christian gain from five decades of practice? From filling her barn with studied Bibles and uplifting conversations with friends and good works toward others?

Love. Joy. Peace. Longsuffering. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. And a dozen other important traits that God builds in us as we engage with His Word and seek to do His will. When it’s all over—when we reach that inevitable night in which our life is required of us—those traits will count for something. They won’t be some useless stockpile with no value to us. They’ll be the things that make us more like our Father in heaven—more like our older Brother—more like children of the Most High.

One day, when God desires the work of His hands—when He calls us from the grave, and our change comes, and we answer Him—the things we spent a lifetime storing up in our barns will determine whether or not we hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The posts, the web servers, the site redesigns—none of that is what really matters.

Engaging with God’s Word, connecting with His people, finding ways to serve within the Body of Christ—these are the things that outlast the barns. I’m glad for the opportunity to continue doing that through this site. And I’m inspired by the people who consistently seek to do that, determined not to let the cares of this life overshadow the pursuits that matter.

One day, our lives will be required from us.

What will you have when it’s all over?