What do you hope your legacy will be?

The older I get, the more I think about the kind of legacy I want to build and leave behind. What is a legacy? How is it defined?

In law, a legacy is something that someone gets by inheritance, or by a will. In historical terms, a legacy is something that is handed down from one period of time to another period of time. Often, it means something handed down from an ancestor or predecessor.

Legacy is a similar concept as inheritance and heritage. It is something we inherit from past generations and pass to our future generations. Usually, heritage refers to material and economical inheritance, while legacy refers to immaterial and cultural inheritance.
Source: Wikipedia

What did your parents or family members pass down that is important to you and others?

What do you want your legacy in your family, church and community to be?

What are you doing to build your legacy?

Remember, legacy isn't limited to money or material possessions.

If I'm brutally honest here (and I'm known to be that at times), as one of those never married and getting too old to have kids singles I often feel rather cut off from community and the opportunities for influence that would lead to a meaningful legacy.

So I've got a handful of missionaries I support regularly and well I try to sprinkle grace pretty liberally because God has freely given it and the world needs it. And I take care of my reactive dog and give her a good place to live out the rest of her life in much more peace and happiness than she felt in the shelter. And I'm doing what I can to make sure that I can take care of myself and won't be a burden to anyone in large part because I expect there will be no one to be burdened with me when I'm old and gray.

As someone who has read and appreciated many of your thoughtful posts, I find this hard to imagine.

I wonder about all the ways that you may be building a legacy that you don't realize. I wonder what those in your circle, those who know you best, might say. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.

Perhaps, part of your legacy includes your honesty like speaking truth at the right time to the right people.

I'm in a similar boat to cinder. Never had, nor likely ever, having my own kids, at my age.
My gf has kids, but if things work out, by the time that happens, they'll be old enough that I'll likely have little impact on them.
I'm a disabled introvert with decades of depression. Adding to that taking meds that weaken my immune system (and during a pandemic) only keeps me home more. So I'm not any influence in my town. I don't even know a single person not a family member in my area.
And finally I'm the last in line of my father's family. So not only will I leave no legacy, I'll be the end of the family line.
Woo! Go me! 😂

My grandmother was a LPN during the 1950s and 60s. She was also a midwife. She delivered babies for poor families in the community who couldn't afford to see a doctor.

Needy and under-resourced people in the neighborhood could come to my grandmother for a meal or clothes, and she would help them.

My 82 year old mother is also a generous woman and community servant. She has helped many family members and people in the neighborhood. She is well respected. My mom always says that she learned generosity from my grandmother.

I personally participate in outreach ministry through my local church. I try to be generous because that's a nonmonetary legacy that my mother and grandmother have modeled and passed down. Anyway, I find myself thinking more about my personal legacy since I've reached middle age.

To be remembered for trying to be good. Despite struggling. Only a few will remember.

When they excavate these ruins
Thousands of years from now
Will they wonder what I was doing
Who I was and what my life was about

When my riches lie in ruins
On the landscape of my past
Will they uncover that I was pursuing
Things in life that really last

- Wes King

I don't know what my legacy will be, but I think it will have a lot to do with the things I think are most important in life.

If it's money, somebody will eventually spend it and it will be gone.

If it's popularity, eventually the last person who remembers me will die and it will be gone. (Someday somebody is going to mention Elvis and somebody else will say "Who?")

The only thing I've found in the world that will matter after I'm gone is who I helped with what in their lives. It's the only thing I know of that will be important after the last person who remembers what I have done is gone.

My legacy will depend on how much my effort reflects this belief.

I can taste the fruit of Eve
I'm aware of sickness, death and disease
The results of our choices are vast
Eve was the first but she wasn't the last

And if I were honest with myself
Had I been standing at that tree
My mouth and my hands would be covered with fruit
Things I shouldn't know and things I shouldn't see

Remind me of this with every decision
Generations will reap what I sow
I can pass on a curse or a blessing
To those I will never know



Seems a LOT of Christian singers have thought about the legacies they will leave.

One thing you can't escape: You WILL leave a legacy. And it usually takes more effort to leave a positive one.

@Lynx Can't believe you haven't mentioned this song while you're going through Christian artists who think and talk about leaving a legacy.

What an amazing testimony and thread, @proverbs35!

Being single with no kids, I've never even thought about having a legacy. During various health issues throughout my life, I always told my parents that if something happened to me, they could just turn me into a compost heap and use it to plant a garden!

Not to sound morbid, but the story I was always told (being adopted from another country) is that I was found in a cardboard box on a street. In the past few years, I was doing some reading and came to find that many adoptees from the same background have a similar "story." Apparently, at that time, it was a pretty sanitized fairytale that social workers were instructed to tell adoptive parents.

Regardless of what the real story might be, I guess I just always figured that my life started out in a box and someday it will end in a box. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust -- no big deal, it's just the circle of life.

One thing I've always been grateful for is that our salvation doesn't depend on what others have to say about us. Now I would hope that my friends and family, and maybe even a few strangers, might be able to say, "Oh, she made me laugh," or, "Oh, she got me thinking about this or that," but in the end, everything and everyone on this earth will eventually be forgotten. Nothing is forever in this temporal life, including the memory of ourselves.

I've always been someone who has liked getting a conversation started and then hoped to fade into the background as people talked. I honestly don't really intend to be remembered or have any kind of legacy, but my one hope is that maybe there was a time or two in my life where God used me to brighten someone else's day.

And now you have me thinking about what God will say about how my life here on earth went when I make it to heaven...

@proverbs35, Thank you for taking the time to write such a wonderfully poignant and thought-provoking thread!

isnt the gospel the ultimate legacy Jesus gave, and the gift of the Holy Ghost
He didnt have any children, had no house (well even that got destroyed) and no money.

I cant think of anything (material or immaterial) that my grandparents left me...they really had nothing. Plus I was just one of many grandchildren. hmm Have to think more on that

I know whatever tree I plant may be still there long after I am gone (hopefully) so I have planted a few. Just the other day I planted one. Although even that might be iffy because a lot of people are happy to destroy trees these days.

I did pray and bless the tree though...it was a fig tree. It. was a bit of a miracle because it survived my dad trying to kill it but my mum rescued it. I put it in a pot but mum said it would be better in the ground so we planted it in the front yard and I said but wont dad try and kill it again like he did last time and she said she will have words with him

I know if I planted it in the backyard he would definitely have killed me as well...

Oh come on! There's so many that if I list them all we'll be here all month.

I didn't even mention the Aaron Jeoffery song... Or the First Call song... Or Kutless, or Kelly Minter, or Sounds of Blackness...

The Nordeman song isn't even in my collection. I haven't yet raided Amazon's used CDs for more of her albums. I'll get to it though.

My hope and continual prayer is that some family disfunctions and generational sins such as fear of man and passivity plaguing my family end with me. Beyond that I think for legacy one should think what will my loved one write as my epitaph. This blog helped me find clarity. https://www.becomegoodsoil.com/2019/02/04/an-epitaph/

This is all about having meaning in life, having a purpose, not merely existing. I've prayed about this a lot. My legacy's not going to be especially impressive the way things are going.

Yeah yeah, I don't know how I'm affecting people, yada yada. As Capt. Picard once said, not good enough da****!

I want to have an impact, a significant one. Unfortunately, I don't know how to get there or even precisely what to shoot for (though I do have a general idea).

I went to this site, but you need to have an account (sick of online accounts; I currently have hundreds ). What is this about?

The link is working for me🤷‍♂️. Basically the jist of it is that at the end of your life if your loved ones had 1 sentence to sum up your life here on earth. What would they right on your gravestone to remember you by? It’s reflective

K... thanks.

mums turn to kill me now
quarantine bubble not really working out for me atm.

so, probably wont get to leave a legacy except maybe as a marytr when I am burned at the stake or stoned.