Don’t Live for a Legacy

Live and enjoy the Now, knowing it is a prophetic expression of a future not your own.

My oldest brother died on July 1^st 2024.  Yesterday our family was helping my brother’s widow clean out their Quonset on the acreage.  Signs of my brother’s existence are fading away.  It’s sad and inevitable.  Memories and some mementos remain, but they fade too.  We are all but dust in the wind on the historic march of humanity.  We each occupy our space in time, and then move on.  Reflecting on how quickly our time comes and goes, at first pass it sounds like life is therefore meaningless. 

Au contraire…I think this gives us meaning.

Given the realities of the brief appearance we make in humanity's historical drama, how we focus on the Now and in the space we occupy in the webs of relationships we possess, gives great purpose to our lives.  How can you make this space beautiful and enjoyable Now?  Yes, the way you live will have generational impact.  Yes, it will echo forward into the lives, habits, perspectives and values that you leave as your ‘legacy’.  And to live only for a ‘legacy’ is a miss.  It can cause you to overshoot into the future and miss the meaning and joy of the Now.

Live your life in the Now.  Live it with joy.  Live it conscientiously (which for me means to live according to the Way of Christ) so that the benefit and blessing is experienced not only Now, but in the future lives and memories of the people who inhabit your world on this journey.

Live and enjoy the Now, knowing it is a prophetic expression of a future not your own.

Harv

 

What Are You Looking For?

Jesus often asked people: "What are you looking for'?

Bono hasn't found what he's looking for yet.  Most of us are still seeking...something.

If Jesus asked me this question today, how would I answer?  Here are my responses. 

1. PEACE.  Deep in my soul I want peace with my Creator (which I actually have in my following of Jesus Christ).  However I also want peace within myself and for this fractured, tortured world.
2. PURPOSE: There is a purpose that peace with God brings to me, though admittedly I often wander away from it.  Yet I sense there is more to it, and I am not talking about a some kind of grand, earth-shaking purpose - but the knowledge that my everyday engagements, loves and interests are not meaningless.  I know that all of life is God's and therefore has meaning.  However I want to embrace that truth in my everyday, and be content in it.
3. 
   WONDER:  I live on the 3rd rock from the Sun, in a vast, unfathomable universe, surrounded on this planet - and in my own yard - with amazing life, beauty and mystery.  I want wonder rekindled in me.  
   

How would you answer Jesus Christ's question:  "What are you looking for"?