"The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully." And when I read that I am back on the old farm again. As I read it there comes before me a vision of my boyhood's home. I see the old white house under the hill. I see the sturdy apple trees in front of it and the forest of beech, oak and chestnut stretching away in the distance back of it. I can hear the lowing of the cattle and the neighing of the horses and the crowing of the cock in the barnyard. I can hear the call of the bob white to his mate, and the song of the catbird in the thicket at the end of the row. I can feel the caress of the fresh upturned sod upon my bare feet. I can catch the fragrance of the new mown hay. I can see myself coming home in the gloaming "as the day fades into golden and then into gray and then into deep blue of the night sky with its myriad of stars that blossom at twilight's early hour like lilies on the tomb of day." And when I come home I come to a night of restful sleep because I have come from a clean day's work. No, this man was not a fool because he had gotten his money dishonestly. He had made it honestly, every dollar of it. Nor was he a fool because he set about thoughtfully to save what he had made. The Bible sets no premium upon wastefulness. God lets us know that to waste anything of value is not only foolish but wicked. What was the sin of the Prodigal Son? It was this, that he "wasted his substance with riotous living." He spent his treasure without getting any adequate return. That is the tragedy of a great number of us. I do not charge you with outrageous and disgraceful wickedness. But it is true that you are not investing your life in the highest possible way. You are squandering yourself on things of secondary value. And to you God is speaking as he spoke centuries ago: "Wherefore do you spend your money for that which is not meat and your labor for that which satisfieth not?" You have no right to waste yourself and you have just as little right to waste your money which represents a part of yourself. No, the foolishness of this man was not in the fact that he sought to save what he had made. That is right. That is sensible. To do otherwise is at once wicked and little. Big things do not waste. This is a big world on which we live but it has never lost one single drop of water nor one single grain of sand since God flung it into space. And even Jesus Christ himself, the Lord of the universe, commanded His disciples after He had fed the multitude, to gather up the fragments that nothing be lost.