How to Build a Legacy into a Home

You may have noticed I haven’t written for a while. We’ve been busy moving into our new house, painting, unpacking, putting furniture together, and generally getting organized. It has been a daunting task.

As I painted the house from top to bottom I kept thinking about the legacy that is a home. We recently left behind a home where we had lived for fifteen years. Our children grew up there. They will always remember significant moments of their lives there. The house was built in 1938 and still stands as a testimony to the families that lived there and the hopes, dreams, and wishes that were realized.

I wonder if the first owners of our previous (1938) house wondered, like I am about this new house, how long it will last.  More than 70 years later that house in an established Milwaukee neighborhood is still standing. A neighborhood around it thrives. It is now a new home for a new family. That house won’t be going anywhere soon.

While I painted every inch I couldn’t help but think about how long this house will stand. What will its walls see and what will its windows view? How many families will live here over the course of its own life? What joys, sorrows, dreams, and discussions will be held around the tables, in the living room, and up in the loft? How many years later will people still be living and loving in this house?

When you build a house you build a legacy. A house is something that often outlives the builder. But the legacy, the hopes, the dreams, the wishes fulfilled never die and never go away.

It’s a reminder of the home we have that will never perish, spoil, fade, or be torn down. The truest and most lasting legacy is the household of faith Jesus left behind when He established the church. There, true hopeful expectation is never disappointed. Dreams of lifeafter life after death come true. Wishes for forgiveness and salvation don’t just blow away with the wind but stand firm on the foundation of faith.

There will be a day when even our new home no longer exists. But there will never be a day when the household of faith, the eternal home built by the blood of Jesus, will ever cease to exist.

That’s a lasting legacy.

When was your house built? What stories would it tell?

 

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4 thoughts on “How to Build a Legacy into a Home

  1. Should have left a note in the cornerstone, or somewhere in the house so that years from now, the new owners can find it! A Tom and Tammy message from the past to the future.