A young boy used to play Monopoly with his grandmother, and he would save his money. She would buy everything she could and eventually became the master of the board. At the end of the game, his grandmother would say, “One day, you’ll learn how to play the game.” One summer the young boy played with his friend every day, and he became ruthless. Day by day he got better at Monopoly and couldn’t wait to play with his grandmother… Soon he played the game with his grandmother, but this time he took everything she had. He destroyed her, and took every dollar she had; he didn’t want the game to end. He wanted to memorialize the fact that this time he was the master of the board. But his grandmother taught the boy one more lesson, and said, “Never forget: It all goes back in the box.” Then proceeded to tell him the parable found in Luke 12:16: “And then he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was fertile and yielded plentifully. And he considered and debated within himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place [in which] to gather together my harvest.’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my storehouses and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain or produce and my goods. and I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many good things laid up, [enough] for many years. Take your ease; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself merrily.'” but God said to him, “You fool! This very night they [the messengers of God] will demand your soul of you; and all the things that you have prepared, whose will they be?” “So it is with the one who continues to lay up and hoard possessions for himself and is not rich [in his relation] to God [this is how he fares].

The rich young ruler had been the master of his game, but forgot the important lesson that “it all goes back in the box. The business man goes jogging. All of a sudden he feels a pain. It all goes back in the box. Someone is driving too fast on ice, and spins out of control…and it all goes back in the box. A person feels a lump and goes to the doctor. It all goes back in the box.

Here’s the question each wealthy person must ask himself. “If you pull off one more deal, if you make one more million, will it make a big difference?” When you get the dream home, when you climb the financial ladder, when you get the ultimate position, you have to ask yourself this question, “Now what?? Now what??”

Do you live with the realization that “it all goes back in the box?” The guy in Jesus’ parable isn’t a bad guy. He’s not an immoral guy. He just had one problem – he was preoccupied. In life, the players will come and go. The toys will come and go. But do you live with the mindset that, at the end of your life, “it all goes back in the box?”