Contemplations

I was reading the end of a biography of our Founding Fathers. (I do not always read books from front to back first.) As I finished, I was provoked to contemplate the legacies that we will leave behind us.

Some will build monuments for themselves, but these have a way of passing away and being forgotten. They end like the poem 'Ozymandias' by Percy Shelley. Their grand monuments fall and fade, and they are lost to the dust bin of history.

Then there are those who endeavor to build a legacy to pass down to their children. These are far fewer than the tyrants who heap unto themselves monuments in their pride and despair of death. These leave their marks on the nations that they have passed through. Lincoln, Washington, Adams, Roosevelt, and Reagan were all men of this quality. Such leave no monuments themselves, but others build them in their honor many years after they have departed. They give such an effect that for hundreds of years after they lived the ripples of their lives affect the currents of life for the world.

We then come to those who leave another legacy. These do not visibly affect their culture, their world, or any major figures of their times. Instead they pass on their teachings, lessons, and instruction to the next generation. They do not worry about any other form of a legacy. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Peter, Barnabas, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Bro. G.T. Haywood, Bro. A.D. Urshan, etc. were such men. They did not appear to the world of their day to leave much of a legacy, but they passed their legacy, and their heirs became the great men who shook the world. Joseph ruled second to Pharoah in Egypt. Paul turned the Roman world on its head by starting churches that within 200 years would overturn the entire course of the empire. Aaron Burr, Vice-President under Thomas Jefferson (admittedly a controversial figure) was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards. Followers of John Wesley built the Methodist church, which for years dominated the American life by advocating a simple and holy lifestyle. Bro. Haywood gave support to men who would found an organization that would rapidly expand numerically beyond his in just a few short years after its creation, and Bro. A.D. Urshan was the father of the man who led that same organization for 23 years, the longest serving G.S. in the movements history.

I then considered, what are we going to leave to those who follow? Shall we raise monuments to ourselves and our greatness, or will we build something and leave it to the next generation? Will we give them the grounding to rise to those heights to which we are not able to reach? Are we going to give them the teachings that they will use to shape and shake the generations that follow long after we are gone?

In parting, if we are going to do any of this, we must act as Jesus once commanded Judas Iscariot, "That which you do, do quickly."