Giving It All Away…And Getting It All Back Againنموونە

The Invisible Legacy

The legacies our generation hopes to pass on to the next generation are not made of money alone. Money is important, and we should be grateful we have enough to give to our children. Yet the greater part of our legacies is made of invisible things. They are the family stories we have to recount. They are the values those stories have to teach. They are the dreams and the labors and the times of God’s provision that have made something of value, not only material wealth but the values that are greater than money.

Invisible qualities, not money, make life worth living. Because of these qualities, we can build a legacy worth passing on. The characteristics my family passed to me are priceless. They molded me into the man I am today. Characteristics such as perseverance, loyalty, and grace are just a few examples of this invisible legacy.

Wealth can be an accumulation of money, but wealth also takes the form of resources, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and so on. When you and I learn to identify legacy and wealth as more than money, our world opens up. We find that we have so much to steward, to care for.

If we pass only money to the next generation, we lay a crushing load upon them. An inheritance of greater value is the sum of how we live, what we believe, and the content of the dreams that carry us to success. This is what the next generation mostly needs from us, and what the next generation must prepare to hand off as well.

Application: How can one generation practically communicate its ideas and values to subsequent generations?