Ecclesiastes 4:13-16 (ESV Strong's)
13 Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice.
14 For he went from prison to the throne, though in his own kingdom he had been born poor.
15 I saw all the living who move about under the sun, along with that youth who was to stand in the king's place.
16 There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.
Truth: Legacy is highly overrated.
Today, when you reach the end of your years, career or time of service to something, you have a desire to leave a "legacy." We worry so much about what people will say about us that we start to live our lives different at the end and hope what they say will be great. What the above passage does is outline the futility in legacy mindsets. The story above is told by Solomon to show us that despite our rise in life from ashes to glory, in the end, after we are gone, few will even mention us, much less rejoice about us. This story is a story of the a young king is rises to power from being poor and imprisoned. He becomes king and then later his kingdom is passed to another. After his death "those who come later will not rejoice in him." The point is, they will not rejoice in his existence because they will be so concerned about new kings and new rises to power, they won't take time to remember and pay tribute. We do have leaders today we have named days after, streets after, buildings after. But, those who come after us don't even know who most of these people are or what they stood for. This is vanity. The point is that our existence, absent God, has no legacy. The only legacy that matters is if we lived for Christ and in His power. Will people say about us, "He/she was a person of Christ!" That is the only legacy that matters and that will last. It won't matter if you were once in prison and became a king!
No comments:
Post a Comment