I’ve been sick for the last month. Sniffles turned into bronchitis; bronchitis became pneumonia; and the pneumonia was accompanied by a gut wrenching nausea. I was sick, in bed, too tired to think or pray. A walk to the kitchen for a sip of water left me gasping for air.
And I felt drained emotionally. All my life to date felt inconsequential, like I’d played a good game of chess but was checkmated in the end. Game over.
I often think negative thoughts when I’m sick so I try not to take them too seriously; but I also feel more honest. My self-protection filters are lowered, I have less pretense. And in this illness I saw a longing in my heart that I usually hide away, a desire with too much control.
I want my life to bear fruit; to make a difference; to leave a legacy; to know that this earth was better for me having lived here. I want a name, a sense of significance, to know that my life mattered.
Is that so bad? I never thought so before, but now I question it. Today I feel better physically, but I also feel a smarter spiritually, and I think my desire for a legacy has been a misdirection.
What I most need is a deeper—more real—relationship with God.
True and false legacies
Scripture overflows with metaphors of God’s tie to us, but it never says God is a spark plug and we are crankshafts (though I am often cranky). The images are relational not mechanical:
- He is a shepherd and we are his sheep;
- He is our father and we are his children;
- He is our betrothed;
- He is our friend.
Only one Biblical image hints of mechanics, the picture of God as the potter and us as the clay. But this metaphor means we are the artistry of God. Artists delight in their works of art. Even this slightly mechanistic metaphor bristles with relational connectivity.
When I was sick, I read only two verses every day for four weeks. They explain relational legacy:
Abide in me, and I in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. If you abide in me and I abide in you, you will bear much fruit. But apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:4-5).
After reading these few words for twenty-eight days straight (I’m slow), I realized I have been looking at life the wrong way: I wanted to leave a legacy, instead I was leaving spiritual sanity.
A branch doesn’t get fruit by looking to the fruit; it gets fruit by looking to the vine.
Which way do we look?
Scripture promises a relationship with God that involves a personal, intimate connection; in it we receive real life—every joy, hope, and satisfaction—all completely from that link. “Life” will never come from legacies we leave, our good deeds, or the fruit we bear. Only from the link.
It means our fruit (deeds and legacies) are byproducts of that relational bond. If we want fruit (deeds and legacies), we must pour our energy into one thing only: drawing on the vine. Even Jesus admitted, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I can do nothing on my own” (John 5:19, par).
I’ll never leave a legacy of value if all I care about is a legacy; I’ve been looking the wrong way.
How can we find “life” in our lives?
Branches thrive on the vine only by drawing life from that connection; the relationship itself becomes its sustenance. It’s more than a mere connection (some connected branches are cut off because they refuse to “abide”). It means we learn to dwell and draw life in him. We:
- Thirst for him. Branches get moisture from the vine, but not like garden hoses (where water flows in one side and out the other). Branches draw in water from the vine, and that water miraculously comes out as grapes in our lives. The legacy is the relationship.
- Converse with him. All human intimacy is based on communication. God invites us to converse with him, to tell him everything we tell our friends, and to expect him to speak to us personally. Not all God-speak is doctrine; much is simply relational.
- Serve him as he likes. Intimate relationships involve knowing each other’s desires and loving to satisfy them. As our Godly intimacy grows, we want to delight him. (And he us.) Abiding in Christ means growing obedience, even when we don’t understand.
What about when our legacies are dying?
My desire to leave a legacy was (I now believe) mostly selfish. It was a way to stake a claim for my self-worth, to make a name for myself. But self-worth can’t hold a candle to God-worth. Jesus said, “As my father has loved me, so I love you; remain [continue, dwell, draw life] in that love.”
Only in dwelling upon that love will we bear fruit. The legacy is just a byproduct.
John Milton was a writer who lost his sight in an age when blindness almost always meant intellectual death (long before braille or audiobooks). His legacy of spiritual insight was threatened. He dealt with this threat in his sonnet, On His Blindness. It begins:
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless,
Milton’s most treasured talent (“which was death to hide”) was now useless. No legacy. No fruit. No nothing. Game over. How did he deal with the loss of legacy? He learned to abide in God. His poem ends relationally victorious over mere legacy:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
Milton’s poem is bearing fruit in my life; his legacy was formed when he dwelt in Christ. That’s what I need more than aspirations for legacies: to dwell in God’s love. And to stand and wait.
Sam
How Christian is Modern Self-Esteem?
Beautiful post Sam! I’ve forwarded it to several of my buddies!
Thanks Mark,
I am still moved by how Milton could move beyond his blindness to seeing that all he needed was God. His legacy in that way is still alive.
Thanks
Thanks, Sam. Wise words and true.
I’ve been going through a similar process of reflection, purification of motives, and invitation to greater intimacy with the Lord, although helped by a different set of “learning aids” than those you’ve experienced. Hope we can retain the lessons we’re learning! Don’t know about you, but I struggle with spiritual Alzheimer’s.
Love,
Pete
Hey Pete
You can have my “learning aids” if you want them. I’m glad to be done with them.
I have the same spiritual Alzheimer’s. Of all the lessons I’ve learned over the years, this one keeps popping up. It is the most frequent lesson I get from God: Christianity is about a relationship with God.
But do I remember it? Well…obviously not. My only hope is that I’m growing into it a little bit at a time.
The temptation of “a legacy” is so powerful in our society today, and you make several excellent points we need to ponder. Where my mind went, as I read, was to Paul. My perception is that NO man has a stronger “legacy” than Paul, NO one! And yet, I doubt he ever entertained a single thought about his “legacy.” We should be about the kinds of things he was about. We should have those monumentally important things to do that literally consume us. Oh, to be “compelled” at the level he was “compelled.”
Hey Jim
Paul is a terrific example. Thanks. His heart was so set on the connection he had with God that he was happy when people preached the gospel just to spite him.
He is the one who talked about Christ pouring out his life–NOT pouring out his life for a legacy–but pouring out his life for us. Paul told us to “have this mind among ourselves, which is ours in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2).
I think the more we simply know God–really know him, not just know about him–the more we will be compelled.
Great comment. Thanks.
Wow Sam, this really stimulates the need for some serious cogitation! My first tho’t is it’s not so much what we leave behind whether in the form of material goods and security or accomplishments, but rather the who we leave behind in the form of memory of who we were and how we lived.
Hi Alex,
You are most certainly right: it is not what we leave in material goods. Yikes. What a bummer that would be if that’s all we left.
Thanks
I do the same thing Sam, think (worry) a lot about if my work is significant and how to make it more relevant. My brother is always telling me, when I get stuck there, that significance (or not!) is God’s job.
I also love Millton’s poem, and learned it by heart since I have CFS, and all I can do many days is stand (or lie down) and wait. I often feel like I’m wasting my life, but that’s not my call. If God is pleased to have it wasted, then He has good reasons, and I’m trusting Him on that one.
Have you read Henri Nouwen’s “Finding My Way Home?” There is a chapter called “The Path of Waiting,” and describes the few who recognized Jesus as the Messiah (Simeon, Anna). They were able to do so because they were waiting (and this is painful) with open ended expectation for what God was/is doing.
Thank you for being so vulnerable about your own misplacement of worth, and redirecting us all back relationally toward God.
Hi Sarah,
Every time you share, I believe every one of us is encouraged. I had a mild case of CFS from 1981 to about 1985, and I share your pain. But I think you are right. God is not wasting your life; we may not see it, we certainly don’t understand it, but God is an artist who doesn’t waste a brush stroke. (That’s something you should understand.)
You are God’s masterpiece.
By the way, I LOVE that painting you send me. I’m still trying to work out how to write an article about it (it’s beauty) and what your gift to me meant. But I don’t have words for it yet. It means that much.
So there! There is that fruit, a painting I look at everyday.
Sam
Sam – sorry you were sick
I know how your world shrinks when you’re down and out – sometimes all you want is to get better. Glad you concentrated on the verses you did and made a great post out of the situation. Love you line on not looking for the fruit, but looking to the vine – if we nourish the inside, the fruit will show up in our hands, we just don’t get to pick the type of fruit.
Also, not to pick on a sickie – but as I read the lines about the Potter and the clay – I imagined a conversation among the Trinity “God, that Sam pot you just threw sure isn’t one of your prettiest” and God responds “I know, but I didn’t make him for looks, but to carry water for me, and he does a great job of that.”
Keep up the good work, glad you back among the quick.
lb
Hey Lyman,
Love your trinity conversation. I’d be happy if it happened just that way.
I also like your observation that we don’t get to pick the type of fruit. Too many times in my life I thought I did “X” well only to find out that what helped people was “Y.”
If nothing else, it teaches humility. God is at work in us to accomplish the great things he planned before creation. Our job is to draw from him, show up, and wait.
Sam
I needed this. Badly. In fact, it’s 1:00pm and laying in bed. Trying to live up to the world’s “will”, and neglecting Gods will leads to chaos in a person’s life. I have a job people look down on, laugh at, and yet…in the same breath say how hard it is(?). I know I shouldn’t care what people say or think, but its hard. If you don’t make ______ money, you are looked down on. In a pursuit to have people look at me with respect, I’ve destroyed my family life and myself. Not only that, but I put God last and put personal greed first.
I’ve got to trust in the vine, and stop trying to change my raspberries to grapes.
Hey Sunny,
My heart goes out to you, in a large part because I know what you feel.
But God has an invitation, there really is life in the vine. If Jesus said he drew from the vine for his life, then we are in good company.
Of course, it is another thing altogether to learn to drink from the vine. But I believe it involves: a) thirsting for it, b) learning to have every-day conversations with God, c) serving him, and d) letting God serve us. (Remember, it was in this same section of John that Jesus washes the disciples’ feet!)
Sam
Hey Sam
A post that speaks to a truth we all need reminding of. Reminds me of a quote “Feeling weak, Praise God! Feeling independently strong drop to your knees n beg God for weakness, that with it you might discover God’s passionate love n pure grace.
Often, wonder if Milton might have been awaken to even deeper understanding of the one way love of God If he had been born during todays medical age, if he could have had his sight restored, like a certain deaf man, i know
Thanks for reminding us of the truth of Ezekial 36:22
Hey Pat,
God sure seems to use our difficulties to teach of his love, even more than our successes. Maybe one (troubles) shows our weakness while the other (success) makes us focus on our strength.
Thanks
My Grandmother is 86 years old. I always thought of her as someone leaving an immense legacy behind. She always inspired me because she was a never giving up, loving, kind, generous, servant type of person. She is now depressed and having anxiety attacks. I am too far away (5000 miles) to actually be there and help. The only thing I can do is pray. I’m praying that God will overwhelm her with His love that this anguish will not consume her. She’s not sick but she feels physically sick because the anguish is so intense. I cannot fathom what she is going through. I am praying God will reach her, because she is not hearing well, she’s not seeing well and she feels like a burden to all the people she loved well all her life and now are helping her. I’m praying this will be the path God is using to draw her closer to Him, that she will see the reality of Christ and find peace in the midst of the tempest. She believes in Him, but I think she may have gotten confused midway trip into thinking she needs to DO in order to receive His Grace. Will you join with me in prayer?
BTW, I loved your chess paragraph. I so get it! 🙂 I’m glad you are feeling better.
tereza, sadly this is one way the devil makes inroads with the elderly. He tempts them by making them feel they have lost their way. Praying with you that God’s love will overwhelm her and give her peace.
Amen.
Hi Tereza,
My heart goes out to your grandmother. I HATE the sense of being a burden to others (in that sense, it sure is better to give than to receive).
May God give her a sense of his presence even as others wash her feet. Sometimes I think this is the hardest lesson of all.
Thanks, and she is in our prayers.
I’m glad you were sick because God spoke strongest in your weakness. Keep keeping it real.
Yeah, “In vino veritas” and in illness too.
Hi Sam!
Thank you so much for this post.
God knows how much I needed to hear that now.
“A branch doesn’t get fruit by looking to the fruit; it gets fruit by looking to the vine”.
“What I most need is a deeper – more real – relationship with God”.
Please Lord, keep us form the legacy temptation.
Sandrine (from Belgium).
Hi Sandrine,
Amen. Keep us from the legacy temptation, and stir our hearts to seek and know you. That is what we all need.
Thanks
Note to myself: read Milton. Good post.
Thanks.