Leaving a Legacy

I recently had a double encounter with the subject of legacies. Such thoughts cross my mind: What is a legacy? How do we know when we are leaving one? What does it mean to continue a legacy? Who is our main target for leaving a legacy? To be honest, I have no answers to any of these questions. However, whether at a college basketball game or at on-fire rallies for church, I was able to come up with some ideas.

I went to my one and only basketball game for this school year, and wouldn't you know, it wasn't even for my college! Last Tuesday was tournament time for the NAIA schools Bethel and Grace. Now, trying not to sound like a sports writer, I will just sum it up with the fact that this was a BIG game. Winner of more than a pass to the next round of the tourney. Congrats to Bethel for...uhh....beating Grace College. I wish I could say that it was a close game. Anyways, throughout the game, Bethel played videos for their season goal of "Continuing a Legacy." What that means, well, that's what I've been asking myself lately. I always thought that a legacy was something new and unheard of. You don't know that you've left a legacy until people you've affected realize it much later. Man, that doesn't even make sense! Legacies are slightly confusing. So, let me look this one up. My main man Webster says that a legacy is 'something that is transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.' Well, that could be anything, couldn't it? It [the dictionary] says that another word for a legacy is an inheritance. When I think of inheritance, I'm pretty sure basketball talent or whatever Bethel is trying to continue on doesn't really relate to an inheritance. That's something you have to try at, whereas a legacy just happens, right?! Do we really have control over the legacies we leave? I guess in the future, depending on age, we have the control over the inheritances we leave to our friends and family. So, I guess in retrospect, we can leave a legacy. But the whole Bethel thing still doesn't make sense to me.

Another situation, more relative to this point was at the on-fire rallies for our junior high. Doug Holliday, our wonderful speaker for the four day journey. At the end of the night on Wednesday, I got a new sense of the word legacy and it's meaning. Our actions can be left behind as a legacy. If anyone disagrees, they can read basically any word in the Bible and find that every person's actions led to something bigger and better. The continuation of the legacy of spreading the gospel is still going on today. And it shall go on forever, hopefully. That's why it's up to us to continue that legacy. I don't think Bethel's basketball team has an idea of a legacy to continue dealing with basketball at all. I think what they really mean is that they are going to continue the "inheritance" of their God given talent and love in hopes that it can touch the lives of others.

Just as Jesus began a legacy of God's love and forgiveness, so we shall continue that legacy in hopes that others are touched by our own actions. So instead of worrying about leaving a legacy, we should focus on continuing the greatest legacy in history. Am I right or am I right? Hmm...