a legacy of love

What do you think people will say about you after you’re gone?  What do you want to be remembered for? What will your legacy be?

Back in high school, my classmates and I once had a homework assignment to write our own obituaries. I remember hating that requirement and feeling that it was extremely morbid, but now I see the value. I don’t think we can fully live or live fully – with courage, intentionality and to our greatest potential, if we aren’t acutely aware that the end of our life on earth is always in sight.

Do you want to be remembered for being patient or pompous? For being gracious and humble when stressed or for losing your cool every time things get tense? For speaking words that build up or for words that tear down?

Are you generous and inclusive or tight-fisted and narrow-minded? Gentle and caring or insensitive and contentious? Are you kind, empathetic and believing the best?

I’m convinced that most of us want to give our optimum for our family and friends, but if there isn’t a well-thought out plan, we can become people that live by simply reacting to outside stimulus instead of acting from a place deep within our souls – thoughtfully, tenderly, and judiciously.

With one week left until Christmas, many of us are blessed to see beauty surrounding. We behold the bright, twinkling lights on the ornate trees and packages wrapped in colorful, festive paper. We hear music that fills our hearts with joy and anticipation, and our minds with memories of innocence and wonder and child-like faith, when anything was possible. We remember and crave radiance, purity and benevolence, qualities we can’t summon on our own.

The plan we need is the one that God put into place over two thousand years ago, when he established for his son to be born to a young, teenage girl in the town of Bethlehem.  God set this history changing event into motion because He knew that humankind needed a savior, a savior to save us from our sins.  Jesus is the gift of all gifts, for once and for all eternity.  His birth, life and death is God’s divine intervention for all people, people that were and are in dire need of saving.

That plan and that gift is for each and every one of us. We have to simply, earnestly and sincerely, receive it. God gives us free will – we can either take the offering and unwrap it or we can leave it and walk away. Opening the package comes with another benefaction, a holy spirit of love and righteousness, that gives us wisdom and guidance all of our days.

The utmost highest bequest we can ever give is to point others to that gift, and to urge them, through our actions and our words, to open it immediately. This is a present that doesn’t have to wait until Christmas. It can and should be unwrapped at once, today and everyday, because all good things come from above and because the end is always in sight.

God wants nothing more than our legacy to be His legacy.

Anything is still possible with the greatest endowment we can ever leave … a life of honoring, glorifying, and proclaiming the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, God’s legacy of love.

Romans 6:23    “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”