Legacy

Grandma & Grandpa.  I pray these words fill you with sweet memories!  I was blessed to have four amazing grandparents as I was growing up.  Oh the memories that come flooding back as I write these words.  Long car rides in the countryside (when I would have rather been swimming at the community pool!), baseball games in the backyard, Thanksgiving dinner and decorating for Christmas before changing to our pajamas and falling asleep on the long car ride home, working puzzles and playing games, riding bikes, singing songs about Jesus…I could go on and on.  I have been blessed with an amazing heritage!

Along with all the fun of grandma there is also a great responsibility, and it is this.

“Train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.”  Titus 2:4

Grandma, mother, aunt, sister, you have a great responsibility.  We think loving our family and raising our kids will come naturally but this verse says it does not.  “Train the young women to love…”  Loving our spouses and our children is not easy.  They say there’s no manual to tell us how, but there is.  Yes, we have the Bible, but more than that we each have living examples.  Each of us as Christians are called to teach the next generation how to live for Christ.  Do you take this responsibility seriously?  Do the words you say and the actions you portray teach the young women in your life to be loving and self-controlled and kind?

And grandpa, you’re not off the hook.

“Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled.  Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.”  Titus 2:6-8

Your children and grandchildren are looking to you as an example.  They are soaking in every word you say.  The are observing every action you take (or don’t take).  They are learning from you every time they are in your presence.

What legacy are you leaving?  Will your grandkids one day read the words Paul wrote to Titus and give praise for the heritage you left?  I pray they will.

And if you aren’t fortunate enough to have amazing grandparents, seek out an older couple who can take you under the wings.  Pray for God to direct you to someone that has a heritage they are willing to pass along.

Each one of us is leaving a legacy.  Let us live in such a way that our family, for generations to come, will point to us as an example of what it means to follow Christ.