Life is crazy right now, simply crazy.
I’ve been doing a lot of retrospection lately. I’m 56 years old. Both of my moms—my real mom and my biological mom—died at 63. That doesn’t mean that I will because my days are in the Lord’s hands, but it has given me pause. What if I only have about five years left? What legacy do I have?
Usually we think about legacies as to what we will leave here on earth: our children, some contribution that improved humanity, some impact on the future. But any of those legacies assume that this world will keep on keepin’ on. It won’t. The apostle John, in his vision, saw the earth destroyed and replaced by a new creation:
Rev. 21:1 NKJ: “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.”
So, any legacy that I might think of leaving here is a mote issue. Who knows how long it will be before the Lord returns and changes everything? Even if it’s thousands of years, anything that I leave here will eventually be destroyed. No, the legacy that I need to leave needs to be in heavenly terms, needs to effect the relationship that I have with the Lord.
The apostle Paul talked about the futility of what we do and how we need to put our treasure—our legacy, as it were—in heaven:
1 Cor. 3:10b-15 NKJ: “But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”
There is a legacy that we each are building, but it isn’t a legacy here. It isn’t with our children, our churches, our jobs, or anything else in our lives, but rather what we are doing for Christ. Now, we can say that something is done for Christ, but if it is done with the wrong motives, it will burn and not last. And yet, we can also do something that seems so inconsequential, and yet that will be the thing that last because we do it to please the Lord.
How can we bless the Lord? With praise, with thanksgiving, with trust. I’m convinced that the Lord is much less concerned with changing our circumstances than He is with changing our character. Why? Because it is through our character that we build those things that will last. When we focus on the Lord by blessing Him, by praising Him, regardless of what’s happening around us, we are building those things that will last.
© 2010 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.
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