Joanna and I decided last year that we would spend our first Thanksgiving and Christmas as a married couple by ourselves. We decided to spend Thanksgiving in Boston...it was a great choice! Neither of us had ever been there, or to New England anywhere for that matter, so we were excited to see what that part of the country was like. It might be my new favorite city, and it was exactly what I pictured fall in New England to be...crisp and cool but not freezing, some leaves gone, but some with all the colors that make fall great (you know, all the reds and yellows and oranges that we don't see in Texas...dang you Texas). Overcast but not rainy, it was perfect.
We did everything a good tourist should do...the Freedom Trail which takes you to every important American Revolution spot in Boston. We saw Paul Revere's house, saw where they read the Declaration of Independence for the first time, saw the Old North Church where they put the lantern after Revere's midnight ride (one if by land, two if by sea...). We saw Plymouth Rock, Harvard and of course, Fenway Park. A GREAT trip!
I love history, especially American History. I love visiting historical places, there is something both mystifing and comforting being in a place hundreds of years old and knowing that great men once walked in the exact place I'm standing. I could close my eyes in the Old South Meeting House and almost hear men like John Hancock stirring the congregants to action while planning the Boston Tea Party, or stand at the grave of Sam Adams and know that buried there was a man known to be "A leader of men and an ardent Patriot." It makes me wonder where those men are now. I wonder what these men would think of the way our country has mis-used the rights they fought so desperately and so hard to achieve...but that's a whole other soapbox.
These men left a legacy. A real, tangible legacy. They didn't live their lives just thinking of themselves. They lived each day with an eye to the future, they built a life for their children and grandchildren that would be better than the one they lived. They built an empire. What kind of legacy am I leaving? What kind of legacy are you leaving? I refuse to be one of the masses that simply gets by, looking out for number one. I doubt that hundreds of years from now there will be anyone inspired by my tombstone, no tourists taking snapshots and saying what a great man I was, but I WILL live each day putting my wife's needs before my own. I will greet my neigbors with a smile and a kind word in an effort to create a chance to share truth. I will bend my knees daily to the Father in an effort to be more like Him and to love better.
So, in honor of these men that won our independence, I am working on my Declaration of Dependence. An actual document re-declaring my dependence on the Father to live, love and...be. Maybe by doing this daily, my legacy will be like what Isaiah wrote about in chapter 58: "You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail...you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings." Not for my own glory...for His alone. Any takers?
