Legacies

What legacy do we leave? Is it something we create? Is it something someone creates about us?

I'd like to suggest that we leave a component of our legacy by how we act, how we relate, and what we are, but in a very real sense our legacy is also impacted in an important way to the manner of those around us and how they interact with our efforts and lives. For example, Gandhi lived to exemplify non-violence, and the use of non-voilent civil disobedience to change resistant majorities or powers. We remember that legacy, but we also remember that those who didn't like his message resorted to the very violence he abhored to end his own life. Recently, Bhutto returned to Pakistan from exile. Watching the news stories of her efforts to affect the politics of her nation, to help her people, my wife commented, "It's almost as if she's courting martyrdom." She was, in the same sense that Jesus courted it on his final trip to Jerusalem.

How's that? Well, to be true to themselves and what they stood for, they each (Gandhi, Bhutto and Jesus) had to do what they did! Jesus had to preach, to heal, to love, to admonish and face the consequences - and anyone who doesn't think Jesus didn't know what lay ahead, is Pollyanna to the extreme - and the same holds true of Gandhi, Bhutto and Martin Luther King, Jr. - to be true to themselves and their chosen path, they had to go and do just what they did -- knowing the potential costs and accepting that if it must be, it must.

Can we do the same? Some of us do, some blindly believe that who they are and how they act has no bearing on life, that there are no costs associated and anyone who points out the costs, the risks and challenges them to greater maturity in their lives are simple rabblerousers and troublemakers. So be it! Jesus walked boldly to confront the powers that be, and paid for it, but also turned the world on its ear! I know I cannot walk as he did, because I'm not made of quite that stern material - at least I don't think I am - but I will walk as closely to him as I may, knowing many will never understand, never want to understand.

My legacy? A combination of one who tried to be what he said he was and one who drew forth irritation from those who refused to see beyond an elementary level of understanding. One who remained true to the message I felt I was given to share, and one who staunchly refused to back down to emotional outcries against change. My only prayer is that God will give me the strengthy, that Jesus will stand close beside me in the way, and that the Spirit will ever boost my flagging faith and zeal.

Peace, and travel well! You never know whose watching and might just follow!