Purpose and Legacy

A couple weeks ago, my daughter and I were driving out to meet my parents and grandmother for lunch, and we were talking about what Xoe might want to do after college. She still dreams of writing and illustrating, yes, but she knows it could take a while for that to pay the bills. And, she said, her Bible study group had been talking a lot about making sure what they choose to do matters. That whatever profession they pursue, it’s a service to others.

I smiled to hear her saying this, because it’s something David and I have talked about endlessly over the years. (I didn’t point out that she’s no doubt heard us talking about this approximately a thousand times, LOL. I totally get she has to encounter it for herself, in her own life, in her own way, and make it her own through that encounter.)

As we drove, we talked through how the path she’s considering–linguistics–indeed is (or can be) a huge service, how it can make a difference. How important communication and understanding really is.

That evening, as David and I were driving to a book study at church, I relayed bits of my conversation with Xoe, and he added to it a question he’d just heard on a podcast that day. A question that neither of us had ever thought to ask before about our businesses:

“Where do you see your business being in three hundred years.”

That one got a pause from me, I’ll admit it. I was expecting three years. Maybe even thirty. But three hundred? Wow. That’s a scope I’d never considered. How many businesses even make it that long?

But it’s a question that makes the mind start spinning, isn’t it?

In three hundred years, will we, all our work, be forgotten? Or will we have made a lasting impression on the world? Obviously we aren’t all going to participate in country-shaping events or become national heroes or set records that will still be set then. But are we building legacies that last, doing service that will make a mark?

Honestly, we haven’t yet talked through what that would mean for our company, but given that we work in books, it’s a concept worth exploring. Books can last long beyond the writers go home to be with the Lord. Our words, our thoughts, the stories that have shaped our hearts can continue to shape others. If.

If.

If they’re stories that continue to resonate. If they elucidate a truth that can shine through the darkness for ages to come. If we speak to the unchanging heart of humanity.

Will any of our books outlast us that long? Any of mine? Will our company live on after we do? I don’t know.

But it’s worth working for. Worth writing for. Worth reading for.

I don’t write the books I do so that future generations will read them–honestly, I have no idea if my books will continue to be of interest to people in decades or centuries to come. So many are being published these days, mine are just a few among many. One voice in a multitude. I believe that voice matters, and I will follow the call of the Lord to use it, to keep sharing the stories He gives me.

And I will give them my all. I will make them the best I can. I will strive, always, to share His truth–because that is what lasts decades, centuries, millennia. My deepest prayer is to partake of that, of Him.

The day after those conversations with Xoe and David, we had a power outage in the evening. Two different people that week had mentioned reading and loving The Shadow’s Song, one of my biblicals for Guideposts that came out a couple years ago. I couldn’t honestly remember much of the book–I hadn’t read it since I first turned it in. So, with nothing else I could really do but with a fully-charged laptop battery, I opened up my file and started reading.

This was a book I wrote quickly, as one of many due that year. It’s short. Didn’t take me long to read. But as I read it, I had so many moments where I thought, “Wow, that was really insightful. Whoa, I didn’t even remember that. Hey, this is actually really good.” LOL. Silly, I know, for one of my own books…but important. Important to remind myself that even these quick little stories that I write in the course of a week mean something. They still have my heart in them and, more importantly, seek the Lord’s.

That’s what I have to make sure everything does. All the work of my hands. All the work of my mind. All the work of my soul. Only when it points to Him is it worthy. Only then will it stand the test of time.

Everything we do needs to have that purpose. And that is when we know we’ll leave a legacy behind us.