On my road trip home from Texas last week, I was listening to my favorite song on a CD by one of my favorite groups, the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. It is based on Psalm 121 and is full of so many promises to the children of God. “He will not let your foot to be moved…The LORD is your keeper…The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.” But the one that moves me to tears every time is the last half of verse 7: “He shall preserve your soul…” and then in the last verse, “even forevermore.”

The uniqueness of who I am as a creation of God, that unseen part of me that is the real me—God is preserving that “even forevermore.” What a legacy we have inherited through Jesus Christ. I did nothing to deserve it, but there it is nevertheless!

Perhaps in retirement years, we think more in terms of what we will leave behind. Parents plan to leave their children a financial inheritance. Or perhaps they pass on a family business to their children. Favorite charities or churches are often listed in a will. Some folks write memoirs or organize photos so that their memories are preserved for succeeding generations. We don’t want to be forgotten by those we love; and we want those we love to have an interest in what we have accomplished in our lifetimes and in the values and faith we adhered to.

My dad gave me the down payment for the house I purchased a few years after my marriage ended. He took it from my inheritance, but there was still some left over which I received upon his death. While I appreciated this, I don’t consider these gifts the greatest part of the legacy that came to me through my parents. My dad’s last years were spent in Arizona. His birthday was in January; so every year, we five children would gather there to help him celebrate. On one of these occasions, I remember my dad just starting to reminisce as we sat in his living room enjoying birthday cake.

He talked about how his parents had come over here from “the old country” poor and alone. My grandpa was a farmer and initially owned no land. My dad, as the oldest of their children, had to go to work at the age of six for his uncles who owned greenhouses in Cleveland, Ohio. They were often mean to him. My dad left school at the end of eighth grade because he was needed on the farm his parents had purchased by then. There in his home, almost 80 years later, he talked about how hard he had worked throughout his life. 

Yet, he always had a job, even through the Great Depression. He farmed and he worked in rubber factories. He wasn’t complaining. He was, in fact, praising God, because he had taken a retirement fund and invested it—and now, he said, there was this much money here and that much money there and he lacked nothing but rather had an abundance. More than he had ever imagined. All he had done was work hard and trust God to provide.

Then he began to talk about each of us children being born. Starting with my oldest brother, he had taken each baby and prayed over them, giving them to Jesus. He had watched each child grow and accept Christ as their Savior. He recognized the faithfulness of God. But while my brother, sisters, and I received my father’s legacy, our perspective of it looked a bit different from how my father was telling it. 

We saw a man who often called us together—sometimes before a meal or sometimes as we knelt on the living room floor—and prayed fervently before us, and we recognized without a doubt that he had brought us before the very throne of God. We saw a man who read his Bible every night, without fail, while sitting in his red leather chair. Then he would climb the stairs to his bed, and we often witnessed him kneeling there nightly and heard him petitioning his God in loud whispers. In church, my dad hung on every word. He taught Sunday School. He shared the gospel with everyone he came in contact with. He worked hard. He provided for his family.

Although my mom preceded my dad to heaven by over 25 years, she, too, passed on a formidable spiritual inheritance to us. She taught us the Bible, read it with us, answered our questions, and worked hard for us as well. She never lived to see me marry or have my children. Yet, I had watched her and listened to her as my older siblings got married and became parents. 

I saw her reliance on Scripture in addressing parenting situations, and that came to me almost instinctively when I began to have my own babies. I unquestioningly followed many of her routines and examples, particularly at bedtime, both in early bedtimes and in reading together before them. My mother also taught us the importance of obedience—obeying our parents, obeying those in authority over us, and most of all obeying Scripture. How she loved the hymn, “Trust and Obey.” These legacies still trickle down through our family to the lives of the grandchildren and great grandchildren. Our parents’ prayers from years ago continue to be answered.

As far as I can tell now, I won’t have a financial inheritance to pass on to my children. There is no family business. But it doesn’t matter. More important than those things—my children have witnessed God intervening in our lives many times over. They were raised in a church that cared for them and loved them. My greatest prayer is that they continue to love the Lord, their God, with all their souls, minds, and strength. So long as that is also my own earnest desire, then I know that I am passing on to them what matters most.

Although I’ve mostly referenced inheritances from parents to children, we all leave a legacy—even if we have no children. We will be remembered by all those who knew us: friends, family, colleagues, neighbors. Those memories will reflect how we lived. If we lived for our own selfish gain, that’s what will be remembered. If we lived out our faith by loving God, He will be remembered.

In Charles Spurgeon’s daily devotional, The Promises of God, the promise from Scripture for March 4 is from 1 Samuel 2:30: “Those who honor me I will honor.” Regarding this, Spurgeon writes, “What can I do this day to honor the Lord? I will promote his glory by my spoken testimony and by my practical obedience. I will also honor him with my property and by offering to him some special service. Let me sit down and think how I can honor him since he will honor me.”

“The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” (Psalm 16:6). May I live with that in mind and forever be grateful.