TESTIMONY OF A FOOL"

        "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."

                                              Luke 12 : 13-21

         Leo Tolstoy tells the story of a young Russian who inherits his father's small farm. The youth starts dreaming right away of how he can expand his property. Then, one morning, an impressive looking stranger visits him and makes a tantalizing offer: the youth can have, free of charge, all the property he can walk around in one day but he must return to the same spot from which he started by sundown, or the deal is canceled. Motioning to the grave of the young man's father, the stranger say: "This is the point which you must return."

         The youth longingly eyes the rich fields in the distance. Without packing provision or saying good-bye to his family, he throw aside his coat and immediately starts off.

         He figures he can cover six square miles in a day. But when he reaches the first turn, he decides to make it nine. Then twelve, and then fifteen square miles. Now he must walk sixty miles before sundown!

        By noon he reaches the halfway point. Taking no time for food or water, on and on he goes, his legs aching and his stomach clawing him with hunger. Still several miles home, he is already fatigued to the point of exhaustion.

        Yet his obsession to own the land drives him forward. A few hundred yards from the finish, he sees the sun setting on the horizon. Only minutes remain until sundown. Gathering his strenght, he staggers on. Just before the sun sets, he the master of fifteen square miles of land stumbles across the line. . .  and collapse on the ground, dead.

        The stranger smiles cynically: "I offered him all the land he could cover. Now you see what that is: six feet long by two feet wide; and I thought he would like to have the close to his father's grave, rather than to have it anywhere else." Having said that, the stranger, whose name is Death, vanishes saying, "I have kept my pledge."

        There's a name for tjis greedy young man: fool. Jesus, too, tells a story about a greedy fool who comes face-face with the same stranger. It's a lesson that flashes a warning to all of us about the deadly nature of greed.