I Thessalonians 4:11-12a

Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not Christians will respect the way you live. . . (I Thessalonians 4:11-12a)

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Her.meneutics: The Faith of Our Mothers

The link I'm providing to a Her.meneutics post is dated just about one year ago. I just found it tonight. Interesting that lately I've been thinking about legacies. We all leave one whether or not we have children to leave one to. We leave something of ourselves on this earth with the people who knew us and loved us, or not.

The other night I had a horrible dream which I won't detail here, but suffice it to say, had I fulfilled what I believe to be one of the calls on my life before the crucial moment in my dream, there would have been a much happier end to the drama. I don't believe in dream-signs, but I do believe our dreams sometimes reflect our concerns, our curiosities, our cravings. I think my dream was an outgrowth of my pondering my legacy.

Living the quiet life does not mean you have no impact on the world around you. Quite the opposite. Look again at the direction in I Thesalonians 4:11-12: live quietly so that people who don't know Christ will respect how you live. This is not just an issue of having someone's admiration for how you've chosen to live; your quiet life is to become your witness to an unsaved world. This becomes your legacy. It's that important.

Emily Dickinson wrote: This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me. . . I do not need the praise of the world. I merely want to hear my Jesus say to me, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." What legacy are you leaving?

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