As a new parent, I often think of the kind of legacy I desire to build for our child(ren). I have been challenged and intimidated by the multifaceted nature of legacy. I consider my parents and grandparents — the values, rituals, standards, character traits, wealth, habits, and worldview they have left to subsequent generations. Both what I hold dear from them now and what I am working to let go have me asking: What is worth passing along? What needs to be reconstructed? Amended? What should be built anew? The Holy Spirit currently has me considering two leaders in the Bible and their successors: Moses and Joshua, David and Solomon. (I say the Holy Spirit because I know I would not have gone looking for this on my own).
Moses cultivated an intimacy with God that Joshua caught onto. When Moses went to meet with God at the tent of meeting, Joshua went too. When Moses left the tent, Joshua would not leave God’s presence (Exodus 33). David pursued the heart of God, and his son Solomon sacrificed and sought the Lord first after being instructed to build the temple and crowned king of Israel (1 Chronicles 28-2 Chronicles 1).
I’m amazed at how such a legacy of intimacy with and obedience to God translates to Joshua’s and Solomon’s own conversations with God and their respective addresses to God’s people (Joshua 1; 2 Chronicles 6). Each has generations of God’s demonstrated faithfulness, love, and power to stand on as he talks to God and to Israel. In Solomon’s dedication of the temple (2 Chronicles 6), he notes his father’s history with God and God’s promises to David along with Israel’s history with God — God’s deliverance from Egypt and His covenant with Israel. Similarly, God promised to be with Joshua just as He had been with Moses. When commanding the Israelites to ready themselves to cross the Jordan into the promised land, Joshua spoke with confidence to the people, recalling God’s instruction and promises given by Moses.
I want our children and our children’s children to have this kind of history with God — to have parents and grandparents, and even great grandparents, who have journeyed with God and testify of God’s faithfulness, steadfast lovingkindness, power, glory, dominion, and sovereignty. I want us to be people who walk faithfully with the Lord, students of The Word, pursuers of truth, contending in prayer and worship, friends of God, meditators on God’s goodness with good deeds executed in the power of the Kingdom flowing from a flourishing intimate relationship with the Almighty. Yea, generations of that…all that.
Father, make our deep and broad knowledge of You the consequence of a deeply intimate relationship with you. May our children and grandchildren learn this from us and be the best versions of themselves, not because they’ve worked so hard to know and love themselves, but because they know You like Moses and David did. Show them and tell them who You are; You draw them to Yourself. Bring them to bask in Your presence so they desire nothing else more than You. Amen.
—Anyah E. R. White
