Today's topic: legacy
legacy (n): Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past.
I guess we all leave a legacy one way or another, so the thing in question is what kind of legacy we will leave. There are some people whose life work is to leave a legacy of their name or fame. Others a legacy of riches for their family or even their favorite charity or academic society. The list is endless.
Me? I want to leave a legacy of love. I don't care if people remember my name, or if they know who I loved, or even that I was bent on leaving such a legacy. I just want to leave a greater sense of love impressed in the lives of those I've known, such that their lives are more full of it, and it overflows from them onto others.
I had the humbling opportunity to speak at my grandfather's funeral a few years ago, and the only thing I could really say about him was that this is exactly what he did. I talked about a few different areas of his life where love was most evident...and how that love had been passed on to those he'd left behind. I'm SURE that most people have long forgotten the specifics of any stories I told, but my hope was that they would walk away thinking about what kind of legacy they want to leave...and that's what happened to me in the process. Many people will never know the love my grandfather had, they won't know his name or what he did for a living. But if anyone sees love in me...they've seen a little bit of him.
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At this point I wonder if those people who really leave great legacies ever thought about it while they were still young. It is likely that they didn't think a lot about it. And that's the beautful thing: the legacy is that of someone who makes consistent choices over a lifetime that add up to a lifetime of faithfulness to those ideas.
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