“One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” Jesus tells his followers in our gospel lesson for today. That truth is counter-cultural in today’s world which resonates with the slogan: “The one with the most toys wins.” Particularly in the first half of our lives, we spend a lot of time and energy accumulating possessions, cars, houses, furniture, art, antiques, electronic gadgets, and all sorts of furbelows, always wanting the latest, the best, the biggest (or smallest), the most Aps, the fastest, the top of the line to show off to our friends and neighbors, to prove our success, our worth to them, of course, but mainly to ourselves.

Along around mid-life, however, something happens—all the stuff we’ve garnered just doesn’t seem to satisfy us any more. We find that larger barns aren’t the answer. Our outlook changes. We begin to realize that we’re looking for something more, but it takes most of us a long time to discover what it is that we’re missing. We tend to look in a lot of different places, try a lot of new things, or on the other hand, maybe we just continue with all the things we have been doing all along merely out of habit or because living with the status quo is easier than change.

At some point, if we persist in our search, we will be blessed to have our heart touched by the Word of God, to have our eyes opened to recognize the hand of God at work in our lives, to have our ears attuned to the still, small voice of God, to be awakened to the knowledge of God’s presence in the here and now, to experience the light of Christ shining on our path showing us the way forward. We will come to know deep within the truth of St. Augustine: “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you, O Lord.” We will begin to understand just what Jesus meant when he urges his followers to be “rich toward God.”