What Will Be Your Legacy?
By: Angela Gillaspie Copyright © 2018
The stones sit broken and tumbled as if some giant child tossed them down with indifference after finding something more interesting to play with. A river nearby flows, relentlessly cutting through the landscape dividing the earth into sections. Men are digging in the ruins and finding items of great worth, they say. Relics that give us a glimpse of life way back then.
The scientists revel in the finds of the day. Scrawls on shards of pottery and carvings on the stones depict how food was gathered and how these forgotten inhabitants worshipped their gods.
I imagine these long-dead people with painted faces, animal skins, and great passion, reaching toward the sky. They chant and twirl about in their ornate costumes, but the stone gods sit silently. Years pass, and their kingdom crumbles except for stones the workers found.
These stone gods were fashioned by human hands and were once revered, worshipped, and sacrificed upon. The stone is cold, hard, unfeeling, and incapable of thirst, hunger, and pain. Yet these people held these artifacts in high esteem, worth, adoration and fear. Now these mighty carved gods are mere crumbling icons that are half buried in a dusty field representing a past life.
Today, most idols are no longer made of stone. They are infinite in number, the first to come to my mind are electronics, people, jobs, cars, food, and money, to name a few. Idols present us with a quick fix to overcome the obstacles and temptations that we need physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Feeding these idols burdens us and weakens our souls. No one can serve two, or three or 20 masters.
Corinthians reminds us, "We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one."
Our God is a loving, emotional, and jealous being, not cold, hard, and unfeeling like stone gods. God created us in His image, with His hands and with His love. We didn't create God.
Our legacy should be the love we've given freely, hope for the lost, support for the needy, sacrifice for strangers, and our biggest legacy should be faith to our One God. The relics of our generation should not be a field of scattered gods.
Will there be stones in your field or will you cling to The Rock?