There’s a book on my bookshelf called, A man without influence. It was written by a fellow who died forty years ago this year. He lived the whole of his life in a small country on the other side of the world. In these memoirs this man, who was born in 1885, talks about his early childhood years, and how, in his days, infant mortality was high and death snatched away siblings who had not even reached adolescence. With a touch of humour he talks about his years in the army and how he graduated as a corporal and later as a sergeant. There were for him those four troublesome years of the First World War – although his country remained neutral. He also tells how, after the war, the Spanish flue decimated the population of his village. Then came his years as a family man, his marriage and the raising of five children, while working as an agent for a newly established health fund.
Why am I telling you this? Because this man was my maternal grandfather. He lived to a ripe old age of 96 but today all that remains of him is a grave on the other side of the world, this book (translated into English by my brother) and a few photos in my family photo album. It’s a sobering thought that in another fifty years no one will remember my grandfather. The only memories of this man will be between the covers of this book that he left us. Sobering isn’t it? One man’s whole life – 96 years… between the covers of a limited edition 260-page book.
I mention all this because the march of time is relentless and with the end of another year rushing up we are so conscious of just how quickly time flies. Moses, in Psalm 90, put it very well. “The length of our days is seventy years, or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.”
The question this raises for all of us is: what legacy will we leave behind? At least my grandfather wrote some things that are of interest to his descendants. In fact, his great-grandchildren, who have struggled with the Covid-19 restrictions this year, have read with great interest my grandfather’s experience with the Spanish Flue one hundred years ago. But how many of us are going to write out memoirs for the following generations? As I think of that, I have to question whether anything in my own life is really worth writing about. Few of us bother writing our memoirs.
However my grandfather did leave another legacy. My grandfather was a godly man who raised a godly, law-abiding family. My mother learnt her faith in her infancy. I imagine her sitting on my grandfather’s knee as she is taught the stories of the Bible. She and her husband, my father, raised four God-fearing, law abiding children. In other words, what my mother learnt from my grandfather she passed on to me and my siblings. It was, as they say, fed into us with the porridge spoon. My siblings and I have had the privilege of passing on the good news of our faith to yet another generation. And now I’m beginning to see it happen all over again as my own grandchildren marry and begin their families. When I pause and reflect on that it is really quite an amazing legacy. It also belies the title of my grandfather’s memoirs. My grandfather was a very ordinary sort of man, humble to a fault. He did not see himself as having great influence in the world of his day. But when I think of three successive generations that carried on his faith legacy then his influence is really quite amazing.
That makes me think of some other words from that song that Moses wrote; Psalm 90. Moses concludes that song with these words: “May the favour of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us – yes, establish the work of our hands.” God certainly established my grandfather’s work of passing on a faith-legacy. Maybe your parents, or perhaps your grandparents, were also people who left a godly legacy. The big question is, what are you doing with that legacy? Or if your family doesn’t have that kind of faith-legacy how about letting it begin with you?
John Westendorp