Daily Prayer: You Can't Take It With You (And Maybe That's the Point)
Daily Prayer: You Can't Take It With You (And Maybe That's the Point)
"Everyone comes naked from their mother's womb, and as everyone comes, so they depart. They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands."
— Ecclesiastes 5:15
I was folding laundry the other night — the good kind of folding, where the pile is manageable and the basket is warm — and I noticed the shirt on top was one of my daughter's. An old one she left behind when she moved out. A faded blue thing from a concert she went to years ago.
I folded it anyway and set it in a small stack I keep meaning to give back to her, which has been sitting on the dresser for approximately three months now.
And I just kind of smiled at it.
The Things We Hold Onto
There is something about that shirt that got me thinking about this verse from Ecclesiastes. Which, I'll be honest, is not usually the book I run to for comfort. Ecclesiastes has that older-relative energy — the kind that tells you the truth even when you didn't ask for it, and somehow you're grateful afterward.
"They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands."
I've worked hard. My husband has worked hard. We've built a life that I genuinely like — a house with a good kitchen, a marriage that's still interesting, a daughter who turned into a whole, actual person. None of that is small.
But this verse has a way of making me hold it all a little more loosely. Not carelessly. Just loosely.
What We Actually Come With
I think about the laundry a lot, honestly. Not as a burden — just as a fact of life. It keeps coming. We wear things and wash things and fold things and wear them again. The cycle is so ordinary it's almost funny.
And none of it leaves with us.
Not the laundry. Not the good dishes we're saving for something. Not the carefully arranged bookshelves or the vacation photos or the savings account we feel quietly proud of.
We come in with nothing. We go out with nothing. Everything in between is borrowed time and borrowed things, and somehow — somehow — that's not depressing to me. It's actually kind of freeing.
The Part That Matters Anyway
My daughter called me last week just to tell me about something funny that happened at work. Not a crisis, not a question. Just a story. She wanted me to laugh with her.
I can't carry that phone call in my hands. But I think I know what Ecclesiastes is really poking at — not that nothing matters, but that the things we clutch hardest are usually not the things that matter most.
The shirt on the dresser matters. Not because it's valuable, but because it belongs to someone I love and I keep it around because I like the reminder of her.
That's the stuff. That's what I think we're supposed to notice.
Living Like It's True
I don't think I'm very good at this yet. I still check my bank balance more than I need to. I still think about work projects at weird hours. I still have opinions about furniture arrangements that are probably stronger than the situation warrants.
But I'm practicing. A little. Folding laundry. Answering calls. Keeping the old concert shirt around just because.
Ecclesiastes doesn't tell us to stop working or stop caring. It just tells us the truth about how it ends — and somehow, knowing the ending makes the middle feel more worth paying attention to.
A Prayer for Today
God, thank You for the reminder that my hands are supposed to be open, not clenched. I like my stuff. I like my life. I'm not pretending otherwise. But I don't want to spend my energy gripping things that were never really mine to keep.
Help me hold the people I love a little better than I hold the rest of it. Help me answer the phone. Help me fold the laundry without resentment and without attaching too much meaning to it either — it's just laundry.
Remind me today that I came in with nothing and I'll leave the same way, and that in between, there is so much good to pay attention to. Help me pay attention.
Amen.
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