Leaving A Legacy

I'm the pastor at St. Paul's Lutheran Church & School in Enid, Oklahoma. Part of my responsibility every week is to lead Wednesday chapel. Last week, we had a special Lutheran School's Week chapel. I did something different, having several people send video clips that I shared via PowerPoint with the kids. The last slide was a picture of my family, circa 1990: Mom, Dad, two sisters, my brother and me. I told the kids that all six of us have been or are in church work: three teachers, two pastors, and one working in a District office. Our kindergarten teacher commented on the family legacy of church work and how impressed she was at our family's service to the Lord and His church. 



Our mom, who was excited to hear about how last week's chapel presentation went, died suddenly yesterday, February 10, 2025, less than one week later. 

Since then, I've thought about that word "legacy" in the vein of Mom and her love and care. There may be truth to that. She taught us about quiet servitude, modeling it at home, at church where she played organ and led numerous school Christmas and spring programs, and at school where she taught preschool, second grade, and volunteered countless hours to help teachers and students alike. 

Perhaps that is where her legacy lies the most. At Zion, at least four generations have been touched by her music, her care, her compassion, and her gentle spirit. 

In a few days, at her memorial service, some of those four-generation families will be there, children that Mom taught, whose parents she also taught, whose grandparents she was friends with, whose great-grandparents welcomed us to Walburg in 1981. They will be there, singing with the joy she shared on Sundays and trusting in the same Jesus whom she pointed to for six-and-a-half decades. 

That will be her greatest legacy. 

It's no small thing, having your kids go four-for-four in following your vocational footsteps, even in the broadest sense. I know she was proud of us, each for our own thing, each in our own unique way of serving and loving and living as her children, but more importantly, as children of God. 

But, each of us have left Zion behind, following the compass' points to our own vocational callings, just as she and Dad did decades ago. I don't know often we'll return to the Hilltop that we once called home. Although Zion will always have a special place in our hearts, I don't know when, if ever, we'll sit in Dad's old spot (second pew in front of the pulipt) or listen to the organ Mom once played.  We'll carry those memories wherever we go, but I don't know how often any of us will stop to check and make sure their grave is clean and weed-free. But I do know that for the foreseeable future, her legacy will live on at Zion as kids and their parents follow what she modeled. 

But, we also know that there will be a day when she is only a faint memory, a name in a story about what Zion was like "way back when." 

You know what? I think she would be OK with that, as long as the future generations keep doing what she once taught pre-kindergarteners, second graders, and countless choir members. It's not about us, she would say. It's about Jesus. 



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