There was a story I read a long time ago about a man bragging to his friend about all of the land and possessions he owned. “See what I own?” he bragged. His friend looked over the fields, meadows, and even a lake with a beautiful home beside it, and replied, ”Do you really own it? For whose will it be in 100 years?” That story has always stuck with me, maybe because it is such a hard struggle for me to completely open everything in my heart and hands and hold it out for God to use as He alone sees fit, rather than holding it tightly in my fists for “my plans”. But lately I’ve been thinking of this fact not just regarding material possessions, but my whole life - time, energy, effort, thoughts, ides, dreams..... for what will any of those matter in 100 years either? And it is really amazing, sort of “upside down thinking” if I honestly apply it to my whole life. It will not be the “stuff” that matters in one, two, three generations. It will not be my dreams, hopes, or ideas. It won’t be my work, effort, or “accomplishments”. It will only be my love, my character, the “little” things like faithfulness, persistence, compassion, faith in God and His Word lived out Day to Day, that will be passed from one generation to the next to the next... Even then those values will be changed, dropped, added, revised... but I think we have lost a sense of the true inheritance given to us, and squandered it like pigs stomping on pearls. Our forefathers shaped us much more than just genetically or culturally or through family ties. And each of us can choose to add beauty, compassion, forgiveness, love, and a multitude of valuable assets into the “bank” or we can squander our inheritance and bankrupt the next generation. Debt, literal and figurative debt, is a chain of slavery from which I want my children to be free.
Help us, O Lord of the harvest, Lord of our hearts and minds, Lord of all creation and Lord of time, to pass along the things that truly matter and let go of all of the rest, leaving a pure and beautifully rich inheritance for the next generations. Amen.
