Legacy- What Are You Leaving Behind?
We all want to be liked. We all want to be remembered. We want people to have nice things to say when we are gone. What are they going to say about you?
First, I got to thinking about this word a few weeks ago when I congratulated a Facebook friend on the retirement of her father and mentioned he was going to leave a lasting legacy and she should be proud. Then my thoughts turned to what that means to ‘leave a legacy” and does it have to be good.
Without looking the word up in a dictionary, I am just going to use my thought about what the word means in most cases. Legacy is what people will remember you for. So without getting all personal and analyzing myself, I am going to attempt to pen some stages of legacy. I envision that not everybody will share the same legacy about the same person. It will hinge on their personal relationship and results they shared with the person.
What is the best we can hope for? There is a story at GetMoreStrength that discusses a man that was about to die and his wife, daughters and son-in-laws all were by his bedside during his last moments. One of his daughters wrote to a family friend and stated:
“Our world has lost a righteous man, and in this world, that’s no small thing.”
Those words come from a daughter that admired her father. They are simple words but concise.
Our legacy shouldn’t include the education we received, the places we traveled, the cars we own, the money we made. What it should be about is our honesty, our love of our family, our compassion towards others and our faithfulness to God. William Shakespeare wrote, “No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
As Paul told the Philippians, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Hebrews 3:13-14).
It is not too late to build your legacy that will be a shining beacon to the people around you. We can build a legacy that is worth leaving behind but it has to be done through one decision at a time. Live this year to hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
“Our days are numbered. One of the primary goals in our lives should be to prepare for our last day. The legacy we leave is not just in our possessions, but in the quality of our lives. What preparations should we be making now? The greatest waste in all of our earth, which cannot be recycled or reclaimed, is our waste of the time that God has given us each day.”
― Billy Graham
The opinions in this blog belong to Tom Knuppel