In the midst of all the challenges, don’t forget this one thing;

Your investment of time, energy, and love in others can create a legacy

We unload our stuff from the van, my wife, daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughters and the first thing I do is take them for a walk. We’re at a conference center in the California Redwoods. It’s called Mount Hermon, in the coastal mountains near Santa Cruz. I’ll be speaking here this week and this little slice of geography is more than a speaking opportunity for me; its a reminder of the legacy my adopted family left me, a legacy of love that still embraces me when I come here. I was adopted in 1956, and my new dad’s mom moved to these mountains in 1954. Her sister lived there and worked as a cook at the camp, so she moved and became the baker, offering legendary cinnamon rolls until 1971.

The camp is brilliantly situated amidst the redwoods, the buildings in seamlessly organic harmony with the forest. I lead my grandkids down a path to a creek. We cross high above it on a suspension bridge, stopping in the middle to look down on the tiny shore where I built sandcastles and my dad taught me to skip rocks. I point down and explain this history, this legacy, to my granddaughters. Perhaps its the perfect cocktail of my early rising to catch a flight, redwood scent, sight, and the sound of the creek. Perhaps its my giving voice to my own history for my granddaughters. Likely its both;

For an instant, there on the bridge, I ‘see’ my dad, a long deceased WWII veteran and The eight year old. Dad’s skipping rocks with me, teaching me the back spin that makes it work. We’re building sandcastles that became seeds of pursuing architecture, and then tearing them down. Their destruction was some of my first seeing regarding how temporal everything is, except the spirit, a lesson I’d learn more profoundly with the untimely death of my dad when I was 17.

The cloud of witnesses speak to me: “Those moments on that beach will always be in you friend, but they’ll always be there on that beach too. And every time you visit here, that love, that joy, that safety, yes, even that faith that was born in these redwoods, it will all come rushing back, through the sound of creek and the scent of the redwoods. If you pay attention, you’ll know it, feel it, and (hopefully) give thanks for it.”

Soon we’re down in the sand and for the first time I’m the grandpa, loving my kids and grandkids the way that two previous generations loved me here. It felt so powerful, as if I were passing a torch I’d received. But it also felt natural. Unlike passing a baton in a really race, its as if the space awakened the memories of all I’d received, and now, as natural as exhaling, I found myself sharing them, replicating the joy and love I’d received. Pouring out wasn’t obligation, but an overflow of what I’d received decades earlier, now with my own unique spin on all of it.

Sure enough, as we walk from the creek back up the road and show my kids my grandma’s house still standing and looking exactly as it did in 1960, it hits me again. I can almost hear my dad’s laughter bouncing off the deck, smell my grandma’s cinnamon rolls, feel her hugs, and sense that same overwhelming joy and safety that comes from the divine love they shared. That exact love… their love, still seems to be bouncing around among the trees, a love which always pointed me to the Creator, and eventually, the Creator’s revelation in the Bible (a love which also pierced me here in these Redwoods, a different story)

A lot’s happened in my soul since I was 12: discouragement, doubt, failure, confession, anger at God when my dad died, a recommitment to seek intimacy with my creator in the midst of my lowest point; delight when I met a woman who loved and laughed and served others so well and was willing to take a chance and marry me. There have been vocational shifts, academic pursuits, writing and teaching about timeless hope found in Christ, kids of our own, a love affair with mountains, soul work, my own healing and growth, forgiveness, and the eventual loss of my dear sister and mom, along with all the aunts and uncles, leaving me the last one standing in this family tree.

There’s even been movement in the structure that’s grown on the foundational faith my parents and grandma (and her sister, who lived with her in the redwoods) gave me. I think my faith is both more flexible and generous, and more demanding and challenging (a different story for another time)

Later in the week I stood outside my grandma’s house and explained to my granddaughters that they’re looking at the house of their ‘great great grandmother’ a woman born in the 19th century who, after the loss of her husband, didn’t quit living, but instead decided to use her gifts in a new way to bless others, in a new place she’d never lived before. One of those ‘others’ was her son (my dad) and his wife. He was a teacher so only had a short vacation window each year and not much cash. She hosted him for a week every summer with his wife, and adopted son (me) and daughter. My grandma wasn’t trying to be holy or spiritual, she simply was, because in spite of loss and setback and disappointment, she decided to keep loving, keep blessing, keep using her gifts. I’d wake in the mornings to the smell of fresh baked cinnamon rolls and redwood trees. And now, sixty years after those pastries on the deck of grandma’s house, her divine love still wafts through the trees and awakens good things in me.

Celtic Christianity has a name for places where eternity and divinity break through into time with greater power and clarity for some reason. They call them ‘thin places.’ Whether there are places on earth that are ‘thin’ for everyone, I don’t know. But I know this: Walking the trails of Mt Hermon, sitting in the conference center where I’m privileged to speak, and skipping rocks in the creek all awaken eternity in me, and a longing to freely share what I received as a child here: safety, unconditional love, and eternal truth. These makes this property a ‘thin place’ for me, heartening me back over and over again to the roots of my faith and life.

So this past week, with small ones who are four generations removed from my grandma, I became the grandpa creating thin places. We built little castles in the sand, and skipped rocks, shared food and laughter, and stood, awestruck, in redwood circles with trees older than our nation.

Now decades beyond my childhood, with the a lens gained only through time, I realize my dad and grandma were creating places of safety, joy, and unconditional love right in the midst of their own pain. Grandma lost her husband early. My dad, from my earliest memories, had compromised lungs from numerous bouts of pneumonia as a child and spent his final years tethered to an oxygen tank after a youth of track, baseball, and hight mountain camping. My mom lost a child at birth, nearly dying herself in the process, and leaving her health compromised. But right there, in the midst of all that loss, these ancestors served up love and pointed me to Christ as the source, and the one who, alone, could give us the capacity to live well in a world so broken. Once, when I was twelve, I wandered into the adult Bible lecture, which led to me purchasing a book by the speaker, which ultimately led to my affiliation with Torchbearers Missionary Fellowship, my faith home and the organization behind the Bible schools where I am privileged to teach around the world.

Christ’s joy was displayed by dad, mom, great aunt, and grandma in uniquely powerful ways at Mt. Hermon. When I’m visiting there to speak, their faith still shines as the presence of Christ for me, a prototype of what it means to follow Jesus. That I have the privilege of sharing the fruit of those seeds planted decades ago fills me with gratitude and joy beyond words. My elders weren’t perfect, not by any stretch, but they served, and loved, and that admixture of laughter, scent of cinnamon and redwood, and simple prayers at the table still, to this day, evoke something profound in me. Deep calls to deep, as the Bible says.

I forget the power of example and the beauty of seed sowing on a fairly regular basis as I get caught up in cultural anxieties, and the darkness of our current American landscape. But a simple walk down to that creek is all it takes for eternity to break into my time and soul and remind me:

Just love others, lavishly, even when everything’s broken, even in the wake of pain and loss. Love in name of the One who washed feet, healed lepers, crossed social divides, and loved soldiers, outcasts, and politicians, and rebels. When you love like that, you’ll sow the seeds of legacy in your home, school, NGO, business, camp, or church. I can think of no better to invest the precious few days of a life .

Key Takeaways:

1) Every moment of unconditional love and joy imparted is a seed sown. Sow freely. Now home from a spring and early summer of speaking, my wife and I have been hosting two of grandchildren this week and I’m mindful that these moments I’m sowing seeds of some sort. The awareness changes my priorities, and empowers me to know that regardless of the news feed, I have the power to be a blessing, and so do you.

2) Thank God in advance for the fruit of seed sowing: It will come, and still be producing generations later. So sow!