Living Your Legacy

Have you ever stopped to consider that you are living your legacy every day. What you do today will impact your life as well as others around you for an unknown time to come. Have you ever stopped to consider what people will say about you when you’re dead? Will you be remembered as a loving father, a hard worker, a lazy dead beat, a bum, a good Christian, or a pagan? What will people say about you ?

If you don’t like what your life has become you can change it now to have a better future. God’s word tells us that we are a blessed and favored people and those blessing are available to us just for the asking.

As 2009 begins search your heart and ask yourself if you are living a good legacy. A poem written by Linda Ellis, describes my thoughts more appropriately.

How Do You Live Your Dash

I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her tombstone from beginning…to the end

He noted that first came her date of birth and spoke the following with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time that she spent alive on earth…
And now only those who loved her know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we won, the cars, the house, the cash,
What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.

So think long and hard..are there things you’d like to change
For you never know how much time is left, that can still be rearranged

If we could just slow down enough to consider what’s true and real,
And always try to understand the way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger, and show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives like we’ve never done before.

If we treat each other with respect, and more often wear a smile,
Remembering that this special dash might only last a while

So, when your eulogy’s being read with your life’s action to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they said about how you spent your dash.

By: Linda Ellis


From a personal testimony, I feel that I wasted a lot of my life running from God and not being the Father that I wish I had been for my boys. They are all grown up now and I can’t redo the time lost. But I am going to do everything that I can to be a better Father for the future and to rewrite my legacy. I was so devoted to my job and activities that my boys took second or third chair many times. Oh how I regret that now.

I have finally stopped running from God and he has accepted me back and has blessed me in so many ways. I am just beginning my ministry, but am looking so forward to seeing how God will use me to help rewrite my legacy as well as helping others rewrite theirs.

How do you feel about your legacy. I challenged you earlier to search your heart and ask yourself if you are living a legacy desirable to God. My wife has a saying that she signs to all her emails,

Dance like nobody’s watching , love like you’ve never been hurt , sing like nobody’s listening , live like its Heaven on earth. Mark Twain

That saying sums up my wife. She lives life to the fullest and is such a joy to be around. She is truly living out a remarkable legacy.

Like the poem refers to; when you take your last breath it won’t have mattered how much you made, the cars you drove, the house you lived in, or the title you had behind your name. All that will matter is how you lived your life where it touched others.

As 2009 gets underway please think about what you’ve just read and apply it to your life. Life is just a very small beep on eternity and how we spend that time will be judged by God.