I’ve done something that is new for me. I’ve joined a seniors’ group at church. As a participant, not as a guest speaker. I’m tackling it like I do a lot of experiences: treating it like a cross-cultural adventure. Sure, some of these people are my age, but what else do we have in common?
I promise to report to you from time to time about my travels in this foreign and exotic land as I observe the customs and ways of senior citizens.
At this monthly brunch – brunch is good! – we’ve been talking about making the most of our “senior” years, carpe diem, and all that. Recently, the topic was on ensuring your legacy.
Some of the conversation leaned practical – making sure you have a will or trust, specifying how you want your funeral or memorial service, leaving instructions for what those who remain are to do with your remains. Some of the conversation was more abstract: What do you want your loved ones to know of your story? How are you passing on your values to those same loved ones?
All too often we don’t plan and then life gets complicated for those who are left behind. My dad dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s for his funeral service, and he took care of a host of other details, working on them up until his last few hours. But when he died, he left a houseful of random to sort through, “houseful” being an understatement.
“Maybe you can find a museum to put it in,” he said. “Maybe you could have taken it to a museum,” I replied…after he died.
Really, none of us has control over how or when we die. Live long enough and we have little control over how we live. That’s what Jesus said to Peter, “When you are old, they’ll take you where you don’t want to go.” (John 21:18)
Sometimes life ends suddenly, way too soon. Other times it ebbs out long and slow.
Either way, nothing is more certain than mortality.
My mother had one of those long and slow exits. In the end, all she had to share with us was her trademark smile.
Well, that’s not true. She left a legacy of value and meaning for all who had encountered her.
On how she was remembered, she had some control. She lived a life worth remembering well. But beyond that, the life her legacy took on depended entirely on what those who remained after she was gone did with it.
A thought was buzzing around my head as I left that seniors’ brunch. Do any of us really have any control over how we are remembered?
Some people work very hard to be remembered. They attempt massive projects. They write books. They work to achieve stellar things. 50 or a 100 years after, what of those projects or books or things remain? The old saying is, there are no guarantees in life. Well, there are no guarantees when it comes to a legacy either.
A thousand years from now, will anyone actually know our names or anything we’ve accomplished in our life here on earth?
Think about it – who can you name that lived a thousand years ago today? Anyone? Anyone?
Okay, I cheated. I just looked up the year 1125. Europe: Henry V, the Holy Roman Emperor died. Asia: Emperor Taizong of the Jin dynasty invaded the Song dynasty. Africa: Caliph al-Amir imprisoned Al-Ma’mum al-Bata’ihi, vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate. Eyelids closing yet?
I doubt any of you can name your ancestors who lived in 1125. Even if you have already researched and written down their information somewhere, I doubt their names roll off your tongue. If it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t exist. You owe your life to them whether or not you know they existed.
My point? Unless you manage to conquer half the world – like Genghis Khan, say – you will be forgotten. Even then, your efforts won’t last, probably not very long after you die. A mere 44 years after Genghis died, so did his empire. And it wasn’t even half the world, not by a longshot. 15%? What a wimp!
Legacy hunting, especially of the sort popular these days, is very fleeting. Vast financial empires. Spectacular political kingdoms. Grammies and Oscars, Nobel Peace Prizes and Super Bowl Rings. Names on buildings and faces on mountains. Such legacy hunters all seek an earthbound immortality.
Building such legacies is like making sandcastles on the Jersey shore. If it doesn’t disappear tonight, it will surely be gone by the next storm, if not by the next sunbaked teenager.
At the brunch, I looked around the table at my fellow senior sojourners. Having just met them, I really didn’t know them. But I didn’t sense any of them cared whether they would be remembered a hundred years from now, let alone a thousand. But they – each and every one – did want their lives to count for something.
As a Christian, I believe that my life counts for eternity, that what I do here on earth has meaning beyond the grave. Even then, the staying power of that meaning is really not up to me. I do my best based on what I know. Only God defines what is useful in the great beyond.
I’ve told the story before of my Great Uncle Gerritt Campbell, how he asked us to sing an old hymn as he lay ill near death. Though he knew his life was fading fast, one song his mother had taught him as a child remained fixed in his mind. It was a song written a century before we gathered around his bed that winter’s night.
We’d gone as a family to his house to sing Christmas carols. This hymn he requested was no carol, but we all knew it nonetheless, especially the chorus. Well, our mother knew every word of every verse, and so she led us in singing it to our uncle.
The chorus of the hymn is taken directly from the King James of 2 Timothy 1:12: “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”
I’ve always treasured that experience as a testimony from Uncle Gerritt about his own legacy, that what really mattered to him was secure in God’s keeping, where it would never be lost.
You have to be 60, they say, to join our Seniors group. You don’t have to be anywhere near 60 to safekeep your legacy where it will last a thousand years and ten thousand beyond that.
Want to process with me how to secure your legacy? Reach out to me via this page on my website.
Care to hear the song my uncle requested? Listen and enjoy: https://youtu.be/ZsFoFVRRYPk
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