Living for Posterity

I've lived my life in survival mode. Always living to get through the day, but rarely looking to future.

In my defense, I am a dreamer, as my wife likes to remind me. I've spent many an hour dreaming of possible futures, possible business ventures, possible realities.

So where has a life of dreams and survival gotten me? As the song goes, "Another day older and deeper in debt". This would be acceptable to me if it was just me. But it's me, my wife and my three kids. Poverty, sofa hopping, dreaming without pursuing of dreams, living on whims, seizing the day without care or worry of tomorrow; all a me I can no longer be. The future matters. It's something to plan and prepare for. To strive for. Survival worked when I was a bachelor but it has become a burden as a family man.

Today PP gave a sermon on planning for the future. Part of Israel's failure before God was her failure to look ahead. It had me thinking about other Bible passages. God says we are to build an inheritance for our grandchildren (and I would say for our great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren). This being both a spiritual inheritance and a physical inheritance. The blessings God gives to me and my wife are supposed to be carried on to my posterity. This means I have to do more than survive, I have to excel. I have to get out of debt, and learn how to wisely invest my money to create an empire for me and my family. I need to teach my children the lessons I've learned; about God; about debt; about family; about all of the knowledge God has given me. If I don't pass what I have learned through the school of hard knocks onto my children, than I am failing them.

I sat thinking about what my parents and grandparents left me. My grandfather had a stronger work ethic than anyone I've ever known. This man came to America with nothing and died with 7 homes paid for in cash and a small fortune in the bank all earned through hard work at normal everyday jobs. He left it all to his wife and kids when he died. My grandmother, being a product of the great depression, was the most frugal person I ever knew and she certainly didn't waste it. But their children did and all that my grandfather worked for in his life vanished in less than a decade. See, my grandparents were two very talented people, and some of that they passed on to their children, but they failed to pass on their financial knowledge, and they failed to pass on any real spiritual knowledge. The net result is they left their children bankrupt (financially and spiritually).

So my father had little to pass on to me (my mother had even less). What little they had, not even that was passed on to me. It's as if I grew up in a vacuum. Survival is all I've ever known.

So now what? Now I learn the hard way. Now I move forward. Now I pass on to my posterity what I have had to teach myself. Now I live for the future, not just my future (that's the least of my worries), but my childrens future, my grand-childrens future. It is they who will see the greatest rewards of my labor.

I've learned late in life lessons which could have benefitted me greatly when I was younger. Now I'm digging myself out of a hole of my own creation. Maybe my children's hole won't be so deep if I can teach them rightly in their youth. And maybe my grand-children's hole will be even shallower.

My wife and I are both 1st generation Christians. We are bound to make many mistakes. But I think we are headed on the right path and I am confident my posterity will be blessed because of it. Maybe the Lord will let me live long enough to see the benifits of my labor proclaimed through my grand-children and great-grand-children.

I thought I was so wise when I was a teenager. Am I going to look back at me today and say, "what a young fool you were"?