Building For The Future

My best friend and I proudly stared up into the tree in my back yard: it was a modern marvel. There was nothing like it anywhere, and we, with all of the combined 20 or so years of experience on this earth, would attest to this. Consisting of a combination of old two-by-fours, and other wood orphans that we found in our garage, we managed to construct our secret tree fort in the middle of the set-aside wetlands that were part of my parent’s property.

We were trailblazers, riding shotgun into life. We’d read about kids doing this stuff in books, but those books were fiction: we did this for real. I can remember climbing into our fort for the first time. The smell of fresh pine filled the cavity and my friend and I just sat and admired our handiwork. It truly was a great accomplishment. In our eyes, we were revolutionary: children on a course with destiny. We believed that we were different and that we were unlike any other generation before us.

My mind was quickened to this a few years back. When I was in High School, I was president of my school’s chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (the FCA). I was asked to speak at the FCA meeting of one my colleague’s son’s. When I arrived, I heard conversations that drew me back to my youth. A few of the students in this group were trying to plan a prank to pull for graduation.

There were all sorts of things being tossed around, but there was a general theme. Here was the general gist of it: do something that will be remembered for years to come; do something that would set them apart from all other classes; pull a prank that that would live on in infamy; something that could linger on long after they had moved on to the next stage of their life.

When I was in High School, I too believed that I was different from any other generation. I believed that I was special and that my contributions to society would be monumental. My parents couldn’t understand my situation because they had never been through what I was going through. Looking back now, I can now see the deception disguised in a truth. If there is one thing that history tells us, it is that history doesn’t learn well from itself. The axiom is that there are things that people can tell you but they are worthless without experiencing them firsthand.

God made each of us uniquely and meticulously. David writes:

Psalm 139:14 (NIV)

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well

Yet our experiences, interactions, hopes, dreams, and aspirations aren’t exactly unique. David’s son wrote this:

Ecclesiastes 1:8-10 (NIV)

8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again, has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

I have commented before that Augustine often quoted this verse and I suggested that the clause ‘except gadgets’ should be added, but Solomon wasn't talking about things here. He was talking about the human condition.

I was at a Jail ministry banquet this past weekend and the speaker reminded me of something that the Roman generals would do when returning from a victorious campaign abroad. As the legions of soldiers, slaves, and treasures, would be marched into the city, the general would come in from the rear, riding on a chariot. The Roman citizens would throw olive branches: lavishing praises and welcoming him back to Rome. On the chariot, with the general, would be a small slave whose only job would be to remind the general of his humanity by shouting ‘All glory is fading!’ All glory is fading… I too might add a word to that: ‘All [human] glory is fading.’

History may remember events, and even some individuals, but when thinking about the children that we will some day leave behind, what is the legacy you want to leave them? Will my daughter remember the hours that I worked on projects for godless managers or is she more likely to remember the hours I spent telling her stories of mystery and wonder in her bedroom? Will she remember the meetings that I go to at church, or will she remember the vacations we took to strange and wonderful places? Will she remember the inventions that I have created, or the stories I have told her about the loving inventor of this universe? Will she remember seeing me leave for work every day, or will she remember the love that I showed to my wife, and all of my children?

I pray that she remembers the latter in all of these questions. My legacy is the people I have touched, and if I have touched them with God’s hope, promise, and joy, then it is a truly eternal one. The only sustained legacy is through the One that can outlast time.

28 years later, there is no record of my fort in that back yard. The boards either fell down, or were taken down and the trees have no apparent scars from our construction efforts. In my mind, though, it truly was glorious.

-Doug