Silver or Gold

Silver and Gold

“Then Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you.” Acts 3:6

For whatever reason, I started thinking about legacies and I asked myself, or the Lord asked me, “What legacy are you leaving for your children and grandchildren?” Do you know – I didn’t know how to answer that at first, so I sat and had a good old think.

What is a legacy? An on-line dictionary told me this -

1. Law. a gift of property, especially personal property, such as money, by a will; a bequest.

2. Anything handed down from the past.

I thought of another definition and that is the passing on of anything of meaning and value.

What have I got of any value? Very little as most of it has gone – passed on to my boys when their mother died. There is no money to speak of. I have to work still in order to make ends almost meet. So what else is there? Anything of meaning and value? Well, there is really only my faith and my testimony.

Apart from my detritus – my cameras and CD’s and DVD’s and other paraphernalia collected through life – mine really is a case of “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you.” Sadly, my family do not share my faith in almost any degree. Yet what else of value have I to leave for them. Sure I would love to leave property or other worldly things of value for my wife as well as for them. Yet, in the great scheme of things, I have nothing I truly treasure as I do my relationship with Jesus Christ.

I have a birthday coming up – my 70^th. I know, hard to believe with my wonderful youthful looks, but it is true. It is this event that started me thinking about legacies and all that. My family want to know how, or even, if I am going to celebrate it. I don’t really want a big party but I expect we will end up having something like that.

Do you know what I would value above anything else the world could even begin to offer? I would like to sit down with my boys and their families and share Jesus with them. Share my testimony – what I know and have learned, seen, and experienced. Norway, Denmark, Holland, Slovakia, Belgium, Spain – places where I have witnessed miracle after miracle after miracle. Then here in the UK too. Testify to His incredible love for every one of us. They really don’t have a clue what God has shown me and what I have experienced.  I know I would cry but hey – it’d be so worth it. It says in Revelation 12:11 “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.”

What a legacy that would be and what an incredible  privilege too. “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you.”