When death starts to feel like it's creeping closer, it's natural to begin considering one's legacy. What difference has my life made? If I die now, what do I leave behind? Though I was blessed to be guided so that I asked those questions earlier in life (more like, "What difference will I want my life to make?") and was able to make choices in light of the legacy I wanted, the sudden threat of dying "mid-career" forces some evaluation. How have I done?

     I was reminded of the trickiness of that question recently when I watched an interview with one of the boxing legends of my childhood, Mike Tyson. Tyson was being interviewed by a teenage girl who asked him what he'd like his legacy to be. In a startlingly profane and morbid response (much of which I cannot repeat here), Tyson replied, “We’re nothing. We’re dust. We’re absolutely nothing. Our legacy is nothing.” His response boiled down to this: the dead don't care about anything because the dead cease to exist. Why should we care about how we're remembered? The moment we die, there is no "us" to care.

     While Tyson's response was shocking, especially since he was answering a question from a young girl, he's not wrong. At least from a worldly, Christ-less, evolutionary perspective, all we are is a complex organization of dust, and when our bodies die, there won't be anything left of us to care. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 describes that view this way: "For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return." To be more realistic about where that view leads, someday the universe will cease to exist, and that, too, will be meaningless. There will be no one to care. Even the greatest philanthropist who helps millions or perhaps billions of people must remember that their legacy will fade into oblivion as humanity ends and there will be no one to remember or celebrate anything. That is the only future possible in a universe without God.

     In such a grim and depressing worldview, the word "legacy" is meaningless. It is folly. The idea of legacy only makes sense if there is an eternal reality that outlasts our time on earth, and an enduring standard of good by which our deeds can be measured. In the Broadway musical Hamilton, at the moment before his death, Alexander Hamilton muses, "What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see." I've been thinking on that lyric for a few months now. What is my legacy? What seeds have I planted in a garden I may not get to see?

     My first thought goes to my children. Have I planted good seeds in their lives with my instruction and my example? Will they mature in Christ as a garden of spiritual beauty and wisdom and courage? The hard news I received in December warned me that medical science does not expect me to get to see that garden in bloom. Is it enough for me to have planted the seeds? Then my thoughts turn to my decades of ministry. My teaching, my preaching, my training, my evangelism, my counseling - will any of it make a lasting difference? I believe it will, but the enemy would love to convince me that it was all in vain. I've never been good at gardening. Most of the seeds I plant either never sprout or else they die quickly. Is it the same with my ministry?

     When I first sensed the Lord calling me into overseas missions 29 years ago, I believed I sensed the Holy Spirit telling me, "You will be a sower of seeds," and at the time I felt called to minister in places where the gospel had not yet been proclaimed. Ever since then, I've clung to the hope of verses like 1 Corinthians 3:6-8 "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor." These verses assure me that even those who never see the harvest still have a rewarding role to play, so long as they are faithful. I also cherish Jesus' Parable of the Seed in Mark 4:26-29. It's a picture of the mystery of God's kingdom growing where we've scattered seeds, though "[we] know not how."

     So yes, in God's kingdom, our legacy can be planting seeds in a garden we never get to see, trusting that God will make all good things grow. That's a little more hopeful than Mike Tyson's take, but I think it's still not enough. The more I consider this issue from a Scriptural perspective, the more I see that the reason I have hope for a personal legacy is also the reason I have hope that anything I do matters today. I have that hope when I remember that God told Jeremiah to buy a field. The story of Jeremiah 32 is oddly placed. After so many chapters predicting the imminent siege and destruction of Jerusalem, chapter 31 promises restoration and the hope of a new covenant. And then that is followed by a real estate transaction.  It's not just confusing to modern readers.  Even Jeremiah asks for an explanation (Jeremiah 32:25) Really, it's beautiful.

     In the Old Testament, owning land in Israel represented your legacy - what you would pass on to future generations, it was the promise that you would be remembered. But when God tells Jeremiah to buy a field, the foreign armies are closing in. The land will soon be overrun and the cities burned. Worse than that, God has said that for 70 years the land will be a waste. Buying a field will not guarantee a legacy; it makes no sense. Except it does. It makes sense because God has promised to restore. God has promised that what was burned will be renewed, what was stolen will be redeemed, what was barren will bear fruit. The purchase of the field was an act of faith that God would certainly make the land new again, and Jeremiah wants to be in on that. Though he would not live to see that prophesy fulfilled, that purchase was an act of faith that investing in God's kingdom is never a waste.

     Every good labor, every cup of water given in his name, every gospel truth shared, every act of obedience is not wasted. They are seeds that will not die, because God will make them grow. They are fields that will one day bear fruit again. As I write this, it is just a few days before Easter, and I am reminded that the resurrection of Jesus magnifies the promise of restoration. We will rise with him and see the garden of all the seeds we planted. We will rejoice together and with him that, because Jesus is risen, "in the Lord [our] labor is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58).

     Whatever difference my life has made (and will yet make with all the years the Lord may give me), I can rest in knowing that, to the extent that I walked faithfully and acted obediently, and even in my failures and wanderings, God's kingdom will be honored and his name made great. Not because I got it right, but because he is at work in me, through me, and in spite of me, to accomplish all the amazing things that I can't now imagine.