When you travel down the street and see a stately old building, it is not evident who designed, built, or owned it. Perhaps the families of the men who did so are aware of it. But even then, what was really important was the character of the man who left that physical example of his work behind. When we read of famous people from the past, people who invented wonderful things or made great discoveries, we remember them for it if its contribution to society was great, but what is even more fascinating is to find out the character of the man behind the great discovery or accomplishment. For the majority of us, there will be no edifice, invention, discovery, Guinness world record, or wonderful music to leave behind. But what we will leave behind is the character of our lives and how that impacted the people around us and most importantly, how it influenced our families. This is a heavy task and many of us will fail miserably at it. Maybe the best we can hope for is a spark of faith, hope, or love that we were able to impart so that when our sentimental earthly goods are hauled off to the thrift store, the thing that will endure will be something of us that we cannot touch, but will have touched somebodies heart.
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