The Unpacked Crates of San Simeon

William Randolph Hearst spent decades amassing one of the largest private art collections in history. From his castle perched above the California coastline, the newspaper magnate dispatched agents across Europe to purchase paintings, tapestries, sculptures, and entire cathedral ceilings. Warehouses in New York and San Francisco bulged with his acquisitions. When Hearst died in 1951, appraisers discovered thousands of crates that had never been opened. He had purchased treasures he never even saw.

Hearst built his empire with relentless energy, yet his final years were shadowed by financial crisis, forced sell-offs, and declining health. The man who once controlled thirty newspapers and shaped American politics spent his last days in a Beverly Hills guest house, surrounded by possessions that brought him no peace.

Meanwhile, his contemporary Oseola McCarty, a washerwoman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, lived on almost nothing for eighty years, scrubbing clothes by hand. When she finally retired, she donated her life savings of $150,000 to fund scholarships for students she would never meet. She said simply, "I wanted to give some child the opportunity I never had."

Jesus told the crowd about a man who tore down his barns to build bigger ones, only to hear God say, "This very night your life will be demanded from you." The question was never how much we can store. It was always whether we are rich toward God.