The Hebrew word the reading from Ecclesiastes uses for vanity literally means “breath” or “vapor”: something fleeting and lacking substance. If everything eventually disappears into thin air, then, what is the value—if any—of what you do with your life?

People may formulate a whole story about who you are based on purely exterior evidence. But the truth is, they don’t know you at all. Even if you’re the sort of person who wears your heart on your sleeve—or your net worth on your wrist—there’s another you: It’s the inner you which is always thinking and feeling your way through the day.

Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.

Every purchase, significant or trite, compiled room by room, is destined for ashes and neglect. This dark thought brings fear. Then the light comes on. God speaks to my heart, reminding me that a healthy dose of reality-checking now can save me from a life lived in things.

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

A person calls Jesus in to arbitrate an estate squabble between brothers, and Christ responds by telling a parable in which God asks the rich man, “ ‘The things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’ ”

Christians believe Christ has freed them to discern what is truly important: to be generous rather than selfish, caring and kind instead of indifferent and cruel, truthful, not false. Use your freedom to choose what is good.

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. —Garrison Keillor