Tag Archives: money

Closed pockets!

A PREACHER TRAVELED across the country for a week of meetings…

The only problem was, his baggage didn’t make it. He needed a couple of suits so he went down to the local thrift shop. When he told the salesman, “I’d like to get a couple of suits,” the man smiled, led him to a whole rack of them and said, “Good, we’ve got several. But you need to know they came from the local mortuary. They’ve all been cleaned and pressed, but they were used on men who had passed away. Not a thing wrong with ’em. I just didn’t want that to bother you.”

The preacher said, “No, that’s fine.” He tried a few of the suits on and finally bought two of them for about $25 dollars each. When he got back to this his room, he began to get dressed for the evening’s meetings. As he put one on, he tried to put his hands in the pockets, but couldn’t. Both sides were all sewn up! The suits looked as if they had pockets, but they were just flaps on the coat. He thought about that for a second. “Of course! Deceased people don’t carry stuff with ’em when they die.” He later admitted: “I spent all week trying to stick my hands in my pockets. Had to hang my keys on my belt.” Charles R. Swindoll

“For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” 1 Timothy 6:7

Mike Benson

Money: You cannot take it with you

OF THE DOZENS upon dozens of funerals that I have conducted, I have never conducted one where the casket was occupied by anyone who had anything in his hand…

And none of the suits wrapped around those bodies required pockets.  “You can’t take it with you.”

Solomon forces us to face that moment we all tend to ignore — the moment of death.  He backs up three spaces and looks at the crash and says, “This is the grievous evil: Those who have clutched can quickly crash.”  Put another way, “Those who grabbed and rose to the top will ultimately release and drop to the bottom.”

Can you imagine the scene?  I envision a man who hoarded what he had and then lost it through a bad investment.  I can see another who fights and wins his way to the top, only to have the bottom drop out of his life as the stock market plunges.  And how about the individual who spends himself in a maddening pursuit of some financial goal, who drops dead of a heart attack?  It happens every day.  In Solomon’s words, he “toils for the wind.”  He departs exactly as he entered life…naked and without a thin dime to his name.  (Charles Swindoll)

“There is a severe evil which I have seen under the sun: riches kept for their owner to his hurt.  But those riches perish through misfortune; when he begets a son, there is nothing in his hand.  As he came from his mother’s womb, naked shall he return, to go as he came; and he shall take nothing from his labor which he may carry away in his hand” (Eccles. 5:13-15).

— Mike Benson