I found a dinosaur in my backyard! No, really! I was digging out weeds around the tomatoes and up it surfaced. Ok, it was a tiny plastic kids toy, undoubtedly left from the previous occupant, but it got me to think. What of me is going to be left when I leave? Will there be any reminder, or even any evidence, that I was here?
It would be wonderful to be creative – to paint a masterpiece or compose a song that would be sung for generations. Or even build a house or business. All good endeavors. But the real value of those things is the people they touch. Do they point us toward Truth? Does the Kingdom expand on their account?
Jesus worked with Joseph as a builder. Yet today there is not one stone on top of another that we know He built. What did this master builder build? He built us - the church. And, unlike a decaying monument or toppled ruin, thousands of years later we are alive and growing.
Years from now someone may dig up my backyard and find a curious trinket to ponder. I pray my legacy is not in the relic, but in the person who found it. That someone may have been built up in the kingdom because Jesus built in me – even if neither of us is even aware of the connection.
If we don’t build for eternity, our lives may be summed up with a yard sale and a trash bin. But if we are like the Rabbi, then our legacy will be the lives we touch. Or, more accurately, the lives He touches through us.
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