Daily Bible Reading 19th September 2026 // Luke 12:13-21
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of one's possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.”
For all that, however, we may discern a real uneasiness in him and distinct traces of a conflict and struggle that were never very far from the surface. He knew he had a soul and that he was responsible for it. He knew the claims of God on it. But always, he kept that whole question at bay. It was always 'Wait till tomorrow. Tomorrow I will pay heed to the claims of my soul'. The truth about him was that he was running away from God and seeking to dodge the claims of that other world that were pressing upon him. God has His own ways of pressing His claims upon men. In a hundred different incidents and circumstances these claims come at us - the crises in home or family, the misfortunes that beset our way, the numerous contacts with men - all are voices from the other world urging us to pay heed to eternal things. It is not possible to ignore such challenges - but it is only too possible - this man found it so - to put them to one side, to postpone attending to them to a more convenient season. The speech he made to his soul (19) was simply a sop to the conscience that was whispering to him that the time was now short. But no man has the privilege of deciding the time when he will pay heed to his soul's eternal welfare. It is God Who calls the tune. And He said, 'No, not tomorrow. Tonight!' And his complacent eventide and euphoric dreams became a solemn hour of reckoning before God. Jesus' words in 21 point to the unavoidable lesson, and we wonder what the man in 13 thought of it!