My wife and I recently had the opportunity to see the Broadway production of Hamilton in NYC with some great friends. Wow! What an incredibly powerful musical that retells the life of Alexander Hamilton – immigrant, statesman, politician, lawyer and economist. As one of America’s Founding Fathers, he was a zealous promoter of the U.S. Constitution and served as the first Secretary of the Treasury under President George Washington.
Hamilton’s songs range from forceful shouts to “rise up and take your shot” in joining the fight for freedom to tenderhearted melodies of forgiveness and healing while learning “to live with the unimaginable” by “a grace too powerful to name. Forgiveness. Can you imagine?” But the song that really stuck with me was the last one in which Alexander’s widow asks, “And when you’re gone, who remembers your name? And when my time is up, have I done enough? Will they tell your story?”
A lasting and meaningful legacy is a universal desire. Will I be remembered – and for what? Will the recap of my life be a mere recitation of activities and accomplishments or something more? The temptation for some is to think too much about themselves and live like they are writing an autobiography with thrilling accounts of their kingdoms. But let me suggest a better way…
Could it be as we become more and more consumed with helping co-author the biographies of others by pouring ourselves out for them, our legacy will take care of itself? Could it be in giving ourselves away by loving well and often, we engrave words of eternal grace into the lives of others? Could it be in living out the words of Jesus, we compose enduring impact?
And as His Name is proclaimed in generations to come, we share in a lasting legacy as joint heirs with Jesus. So perhaps the question worth considering is not “Will they tell your story? but “Will they tell His story?”
Less of us. More of Jesus. Start writing.
2 Corinthians 3:2-3 NET You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone, revealing that you are a letter of Christ…written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on tablets of human hearts.