I’ve sometimes wondered if I have a slightly unhealthy preoccupation with time. I know I’m still young, and I know people are living older and older, but I sometimes can’t escape the feeling that I need to make sure my life is moving in the direction of the work I believe God has called me to. Sometimes that isn’t entirely clear to me–grad school at Northwest was obvious, what I’ll be doing a year from now is still a little foggy–but I have a hard time ‘being still’ for long periods of time. Though I can see now the things God wanted to teach me and show me while I was in California, while I was there was a very frustrating time to me. I knew I didn’t want to spend my life working in Christian camping but I knew that is where God had called me to at that time.

I guess the point of all this is I want to ask if we would live our lives differently if we started thinking now about our legacy, rather than waiting until we’ve spent a career doing whatever it is we do? Part of this is just me thinking out loud. I don’t think we should necessarily obsess about what people will say at our funeral when we’re in our 20s, 30s, 40s, even 50s–we all easily have at least 30-40 years before that point. I guess part of my struggle is against culture that promotes legacy in terms of material goods; climb the ladder, buy the homes, the cars, be remembered for your wealth. I feel like our world needs a kind of Ebeneezer Scrooge moment where the ghosts of our past rattle their chains and remind us of the legacy of empire we have built. I think if we live our lives in a way that strives always to build a world in the image of the Kingdom of God, rather than being preoccupied with our legacy and righting past wrongs at the end of our lives, we can look forward instead to the time when we hear “well done my good and faithful servant.”

Filed under: life by Jonathan