Your Legacy
To better understand the importance of this Post stop for a brief time and think of one of your deceased friends. Include what that friend meant to you. Please do it and then resume reading.
Like that friend you will someday be deceased and people will be thinking of you. You may think they won’t, but they will. How will they recall you?
They will remember a kind word, a warm smile, a special deed, something you gave them, or your faith and faithfulness. Today you will make a deposit in someone’s memory bank. Be sure to leave those you encounter with a good recall.
How will you be remembered? Soon your name will be spoken of along with those who have predeceased you. That should not be thought of as morbid, but as counsel regarding being your best every day and leaving the trail of a life well lived.
You, that’s right you, will live on in the broken hearts of some that will never heal. Give them pleasant memories.
The most important thing that you leave behind will not be that which is etched in stone on your tombstone, but the memories woven into the fabric of the lives of others. The memory of you will live on with those you have touched.
There are various rewards in heaven for believers resulting from their life’s work on earth. These rewards are given at the final judgment. They are not given until then because one’s work lives on. For example the Apostle Paul will not get his final reward until the final judgment because his work is still producing. The same is true of us. How will your life be celebrated and your memory be honored?
Are your exploits worthy to be honored and followed?
As those who have gone before you contributed to your life you are now depositing a part of yourself in those who will come after you. By ever so small of a way you will be an influencing memory in the lives to come after you. Help them by leaving them good memories.
Think about it at the end of each day what imprint have you made on lives. You may fade from their lives like a rising fog, but your influence will remain.
Few are those who leave a legacy larger than life. Don’t be concerned if you might not be one of those. You are only responsible for faithfulness in your sphere of life. That is where you can stand tall. Memories of most will soon be eroded from society in general. However, there are our peers in whose torn hearts we will long be remembered and that memory passed on to others.
Are you leaving those close to you with assurance as to where you will have gone after passing through the old door of death through which all must go? That is the ultimate condolence.
Will those who encountered you be able to say: “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you…” (Philippians 1:3)?