"Nana was gone. Her closest relatives had all came today to say goodbye. Jess wrote the following in an e-mail to our staff: The family has said goodbye to our beautiful nana Ellen. Tonight she closed her eyes and woke up with our Jesus. She was the best mom, and grandma anyone could have. She loved people with all her heart and she loved Jesus."
I could have included my entire journal entry from this day last year but I am sure you don't want to read the details of soccer practice and grocery shopping in between the point of what this day was all about. Here was a woman who simply loved people and loved Jesus. She would recall her favorite moments again and again and loved to talk. She had a flare for life. She would order things from Home Shopping Network and immediately return it or tuck it away and never use it. We all laughed about it with her. She loved to cook for her family.
All these things are happy memories but even more so they are her legacy and they have have shaped individuals and families. The real point of what I am saying here is not about my wife's Nana. It is really about you. What will people say when you are gone? What will the legacy be that you leave?
Life is too short to mess around. We must love passionately and let people know we love them. We must witness like Jesus is coming back today (because if it was the Will of the Father He could). We must work and build for the future and for our families and future generations. As we do the legacy we leave will be one worth having.
You may have heard the story of the man who had been working with explosives and became wealthy through his work. When his brother passed away there was an error in the newspaper and the reporter did an obituary on this man instead of his brother. It was all about how he had merchandised death and his life was destructive from that point of view. The man decided to change his legacy and poured himself into more honorable pursuits and rewarded others for the same. That man was Alfred Nobel who the Nobel Peace Prize is named after.
If you don't like the answer you came up with when I asked what would people say about you then it is time to make some changes. You can as long as you have breath in your lungs. It is like a friend of mine used to say to me from his seat in a wheelchair with a smile on his face; 'Any day above ground is a good one.' Now I happen to know that the day of a Christian's death is much better than thousands of days here on the earth but I get what he was saying.
Let's live and love and leave a legacy so that when we go into eternity people speak of the wonderful things we have done and the impact we had on their lives.
If you could write your own obituary what would it say? Are there any that you have heard of or read in the Bible or somewhere else that you admired the person after hearing it? Who and why?
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