Measure & Purpose

I wonder what others will say of me after I am gone.  Will what I have come to value and prioritize be seen, especially those who know me best.  As I watched the funeral service of a president who touched many lives, including mine, by giving them hope, I found myself affirming in silence the purpose and intent of his long life.
 
Some are recognized in death of having seen it all.  This can be a euphemism for have led a selfish life that consumed much from across the spectrum.  It says little about what the person gave back, if anything at all.
 
Others are known for being kind hearted.  It was interesting that the words I heard yesterday echoed much of this theme.  It would have been easy to hedge the compliment by adding reasons for the kindness.  The conditions could have been “that he was a shrew politician who always kept his enemies as friends”, “he used kindness as a usual method of entry” or even that “his kindness often masked his true feelings”.  Yet there were no conditions on the praise that was universally given.  This man appeared to genuinely love people just as they were.  Everyone was a possible supporter!
 
I live with enough gray hairs that I feel my mortality far more easily than I did in years gone by.  I don’t have any plans to lay out my funeral arrangements twenty years in advance or to have three hundred pages of details.  Yet there is something helpful, useful really, in reflecting how I am going to make today part of my legacy.  What will be the measure of my purpose as seen by those around me?  How will their views differ from my own?  Can I combine my vision for the future with the judgment of the present?
 
I do know this.  I hope others will be able to say this of me…Bill “came down from heaven not to follow my [his] own whim but to accomplish the will of the One who sent me [him].”  (John 6.38)