Your Legacy

“The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come” (Ecc. 1:11 NRSV)

A couple of years ago my grandmother came down from Greensboro N.C. for a summer visit. On an August afternoon we spent time driving around Atlanta – the city of her birth – and she pointed out sites of significance in our family. It was a typical oven-like August, and under most circumstances I would have eagerly sought any excuse to avoid short car trips, interrupted by walking around in the heat, followed by another short car trip that never allowed the AC to get chilly. But these were not normal circumstances. My grandmother, aging and weakening, knows things about my family that I don’t know. She remembers things I’ve never heard about. It was a day of new insights and revelations. I loved every thick hot moment of it.

Not far from Peachtree Presbyterian there’s a little Methodist church on Powers Ferry Road, Sardis Methodist Church. One of the stops that afternoon was in the cemetery that occupies significant acreage next to the small building. That day my grandmother showed me a gravestone marked ROSSER. That’s her name, my mother’s maiden name. My maternal great-grandfather was a member there and was involved in paying off the note on the building that currently stands on Powers Ferry Road.

The writer of Ecclesiastes laments that “there is no remembrance of men of old.” In a way he’s right. How is it that I managed to drive by that church for years without guessing that I had even the remotest connection to the place? Three short generations had rinsed my great grandfather from the canvass of my consciousness.

And yet, there has been all along a legacy. Though unrecognized, it is no less real or formative. The generation of ROSSER that established a little church on Powers Ferry road is not remembered by me in the truest sense, but that generation is by no means escaped or truly forgotten. Our lives are cabled by unseen continuities and connections. The “men of old” are always with us.

By someone, in some way, you will be remembered. Your name and accomplishments may not belong to the ages, but the life you live now will somehow be wielded like a sculptors hammer, shaping another life. What will your legacy be?

Prayer: God of all ages, work in me as you see fit shaping a life worthy of being remembered, if only for a short while. Whatever there may be in my life that lasts into another generation, may it bring you glory. Amen.