What legacy are you leaving? How have you touched lives? How have you loved others?

Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Though Thoreau was probably not a Jesus-follower, he recognized that life was valuable, and should be treated as such. Thoreau lived by this creed:

I wanted to live deliberately.

I wanted to live deep and to suck out all the marrow of life

To put to rout all that was not life

And not when I had come to die

Discover that I had not lived.

As another writer said, "I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well."

It takes courage to build a legacy. Far too many Jesus-followers have been derailed from the journey God planned for them, merely because they naively expected a smooth trip on this side of heaven.

Jesus said this about people who live so cautiously that they squander their lives: "That's a terrible way to live! It's criminal to live cautiously like that! If you knew I was after the best, why did you do less than the least?" (Matthew 25:26,27)

Melinda Wallace asked, "Are we asking for quality from each and every minute we spend? Jesus thought our life worthy of spilling His blood for; are we devaluing His blood with a lackadaisical approach to life? Few people set out to live a mediocre life, but many arrive there. Why? Simply because they take the path of least resistance."

Impact and legacy start with listening - listening to God, listening to those whom we serve and listening to those to whom we're accountable. Some of us have buried our talents because we've failed to listen. We need the patience to wait on God for vision and then the fortitude to live out that vision one day at a time.