Legacy

Mid-life crisis is the time of life when people start to think about their legacy. Men and women handle this differently.
Men wonder what they gave their life to, if it was worth it, then panic, buy themselves a small, (no room for the kiddies) convertible and a baseball cap, and hit the open road, looking for their legacy. Sadly, many of them decide divorce and biker bars are where they will find it.
Women seem to go the opposite direction when mid-life crisis hits. Men run from their families, while women run towards them. Women who would never have taken their own children to a park suddenly start cooking up schemes to take their grandkids to Disneyland. And they do. They get a minivan and a few cases of goldfish crackers and hit the open road, diaper bags in the back, looking for their legacy.
Most people have no idea what their legacy will be. The guy who invented Monopoly probably had higher aspirations than "Board Game Inventor" when he thought about his legacy. How about that innkeeper who turned away a poor couple the night the wife went into labor in a barn? Then there's Neville Chamberlain, giving in to a German bully while loudly proclaiming "Peace in our time," thereby releasing Hitler on the world.No one knows what their legacy will be, but everyone wants a huge, glorious, good one. No one wants to even think about leaving a so-so one. (Think of the epitaphs - "Here Lies a Mediocre Cook and An O.k. Mother," or "Essentially Harmless," or "Not As Good As Some, But Better Than Others.")
A man I know who has been a Christian for many years, happily married for decades to the same woman, keeps looking for new jobs. Each job he gets, he becomes excited and works hard at first, then he decides the job is not worthy of his time. Why should he, with all of his qualifications, take out his own garbage? It is beneath him. Soon after taking on a new job, after assuring everyone that he will "change the face of" whatever company he is working for, he stops trying. He decides that he would be better used somewhere else.Unfortunately, he becomes of little use where he is, and starts looking for new work.
The problem is, he is looking for a legacy. The funny thing about looking for a legacy is that if you go off looking for it, you will never find it. No one pulls a legacy out of thin air, and it is very possible to live a life spent on the trivial and leave no legacy at all. A good legacy requires generous spending of time and qualifications that could be spent elsewhere, but aren't. To reap generously you must sow generously. A book I've always meant to read is titled "A Long Obedience In the Same Direction," and that title sums up what brings a lasting legacy.
The Bible is full of assurances that whatever we do that God asks of us is never useless or pointless, even though we may not see the fruit of our actions. It all counts, we just can't see it. Big legacy people don't often see the results of their labors.
If you want to see a big legacy person in the Bible, look at Abraham, father of the Jewish nation. Generation after generation of his descendants conquered and ruled Canaan, as he was promised. God considered him a friend. Angels visited him. The Messiah Himself came through his lineage. Yet what did this extremely qualified and capable man spend his time doing? He wandered. He chased his sheep. He dug a well or two. He lived in a tent. For many, many years the only thing in his life to point to his big legacy was God's promise. But he had a long obedience in the same direction, and it counted. Abraham didn't see his millions of descendants. He only got to see Isaac. But he was able to trust God for his descendants "as numerous as the stars in the sky." And God saw this trust as a very big deal. Abraham, flaws and all, was declared righteous and a friend of God. This wandering shepherd left a huge legacy, because he trusted God to choose it and to back up His promises.
The man I know who keeps starting new jobs is missing a legacy because he is trying to choose for himself what only God can give. Millions of people have quietly obeyed and followed God and in so doing have changed the world- and they probably never knew it. But God, Who knows all things, planned and knew and held their legacies for them. At the end of time, their reward will be, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
No convertible, no trip to Disneyland, and certainly no goldfish crackers can even come close.