A LEGACY

 

 

“Your life isn’t about you. It’s about leaving a legacy.  Who will you touch by your giving spirit in your lifetime?”

-        Will Shannon, Pinnacle Clinic

I have pondered about this thought. Leaving a legacy means wanting others to be better because you have lived.

There is no greater example of this than the Saviour Jesus Christ. His life was nothing about Him, but everything about others. Never at any time did He ask the question: “What about me?” that we so often ask of those who have wronged us, or of those we keep giving to without receiving anything in return.

The Saviour left a legacy by the life that He lived which is the blueprint of what ours should be. His sacrifice did not begin and end on the cross and Gethsemane. That was the pinnacle of His sacrifice which will echo throughout eternity. I am, however, talking about the entirety of His life. This is the mark He left on the world, even the unbelieving.

Christ’s life was driven by one attribute: selflessness. From this attribute came His mercy, His humility, His goodness, His very being. The whole world knows about Christian values because of Him: what He preached, the way He lived, the way He sacrificed. He left a path to be followed, a road to be travelled.

The Saviour added value to all human beings through His selflessness which was born out of His pure love. This is a love unique only to Him. It cannot be developed. It is a love that is an endowment given to all true followers of Christ (Moroni 7:48).

Christ's love is pure because it is free of any ulterior motives or hidden agendas for self-advancement. His over-riding desire is to bring each one of us to His own station of perfection, glory, power and dominion. It is this selflessness and pure love that enabled Him to submit to the greatest agony experienced by man.

The pure love of Christ would likewise enable us to lift another to salvation, to extend brotherly love through selfless acts of kindness, to do good and serve others in all things and in all places.

Who we are and what we do is the mark we leave on others forever. The value we add to another’s life is the greatest legacy we can leave behind. This is what it means to be like Christ.

In 1837 the Lord gave this advice to the Twelve: “Arise, take up your cross, follow me, and feed my sheep” (D&C 112:14). Lest we think we are exempt, He also said: “What I say unto one, I say unto all” (D&C 92:1; 61:18, 36; 82:5; 93:49)

Never has this goal of adding value to another been more needful than now where humanity is encouraged to live a self-centered life: to live our truth, to be successful in our own right, to reach the heights of popularity, recognition, abundance and power, even if it means diminishing others to obtain it.

When the Saviour approached Gethsemane, He did not retreat, He opened the gate……He had us in His sight.

 

I follow in His footsteps

But they are too mighty to fill.

His blood and sweat flow from Calvary’s hill

And I hear Him say:

It is enough, I will make up the rest,

I accept your holy quest!

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Feed My Lambs by Greg Sargent)