Legacies

I got to go to a funeral today.  It’s not often that you will hear someone say that, and probably less likely to hear that from me than most.  I typically do not like funerals, do you?  I don’t like being sad or down.  I tend to think of myself as an uplifting person, but I just don’t like funerals.  But today I learned, or was reminded, about a couple of important things at the funeral today.  I thought I would share them here for all of us to consider.

First, I was reminded that life is short.  The man who was buried today was 92 years old.  You might say that wasn’t short.  People will no doubt say he lived a long productive life or something like that; but, let’s think about it from just a little different perspective.  You might say “92 years is a long time. I will be lucky to make it to 50, 60 or whatever age limit you might place here.  But let’s think about 92 years in God’s eyes.  Let’s look at 92 years, or 50 or 60 years from the looking glass of eternity.  What do we see now?  James put it like this, “You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” (James 4:14)  We just never know how much time we have left.  To put it into perspective, our lives are like the steam over the boiling pot of water that vanishes before our eyes.  I have also heard it described as “a dot on a very long line”, an eternal line.  David put it like this in Psalm 144:4, “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.”  You may wonder where I am going with all this.  That leads me to the second thing I was reminded of today….

We leave it all behind, and nothing we leave behind is more important than our legacy.  You see, what we do here on earth matters, and we don’t have much time to do it.  We don’t have to stay in the legacy of our mother or our father or anyone else.  For many that would be a great legacy to leave, but for others that might not be the case.  You see each day we wake up to write the story of our life for that day!  God in His infinite wisdom didn’t make us stay where we have been.  He had so much more in store for us.  That’s why he gave us His Son.  Jesus came so that we could have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10).  Jesus came to help us leave others the best legacy possible.  He came to make it possible to start fresh today with a new legacy.  Who wants to start or continue to leave a legacy that our children and our children’s children will not only be proud of, but will want to follow?  I know I for one want to do the best I can to do the most good I can in the short time I have on this earth.  Then I want God to say, “Well done”.  Don’t you?

God Bless!