legacy on Obituaries

Do any of you know the name of the inventor of dynamite? It might sound familiar once you hear it, it’s Alfred Nobel. In 1867, Nobel, Alfred Nobel, who was a Swedish chemist invented a new high explos...

In the day that we stand before our Master and Maker, it will not matter how many people on earth knew our name, how many called us great, and how many considered us fools. It will not matter whether ...

Abraham Lincoln’s sharp wit often surfaced, even in serious moments. At the funeral of a talented but overly vain Army General during the Civil War, Lincoln observed the large crowd that had gathered....

Benjamin Franklin, an avid lover of books, penned an epitaph for himself that he hoped would one day mark his grave: The body of Benjamin Franklin, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn...

W.H. Auden is widely considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century. Auden grew up in England but spent some of his adult years in the United States. When he passed away on the 29th of Septe...

An elderly master carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He w...

In South Florida several years ago, there was a skywriter who occasionally spelled out happy messages about God—things like “God loves you.” Often, on a clear morning, you could step out and see the p...

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

An elderly master carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He w...

Normally, if someone's legacy will outlast their life, it's apparent when they die. On the day when Alexander the Great, or Caesar Augustus, or Napoleon, or Socrates, or Muhammad died, their r...

Only one life, ’twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.

The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.

A few weeks after Rich Mullins died in a car accident in 1997 at age forty-one, his friend and financial manager, Jim Dunning, went to collect Rich’s possessions. Mullins was a wildly successful Chris...

The streets of Cairo were hot and dusty. Our missionary friends Pat and Rakel Thurman took us down an alley. We drove past Arabic signs to an overgrown graveyard for American missionaries. As Nanci an...

John Howard (1726-1790) was a British philanthropist and reformer who, based on his Christian convictions, dedicated his life to the improvement of hospital conditions and prison reform. On his tomb...

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

If you had to summarize your life in six words, what would they be? Several years ago an online magazine asked that question. It was inspired by a possibly legendary challenge posed to Ernest Hemingwa...

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

On a warm summer night, I drove my son to a local cemetery. It was a Moravian cemetery that sits nestled on a hill overlooking a flowing creek. My son, a typical teenager in many ways—Xbox, iPhone, ho...

I try not to think about legacy because it is all ­folly. If you study history, even recent history, you'll find many people who were quite significant in their time but are completely forgotten.

One of the great lies humans have been told is that if we gain enough power and influence, we can be remembered and make a lasting impact. In his short poem Ozymandias , Percy Bysshe Shelley highligh...

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

There's no need to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can't do any business from there.

The politician Helen Violet Asquith (later Bonham Carter) was once attending a dinner with Winston Churchill, who initially seemed lost in abstraction for an awkwardly long period of time. Abruptly he...

In his book Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes , professor and missionary Kenneth Bailey unlocked some very interesting features of the parable of the prodigal son, here focused on what it m...

Lent 2021: A 40-day Heart Restoration A Promise to Bless AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? From Noah to Abraham Last week, we looked at the story ...

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one's children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one's life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.

Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you, just measure it in inches.

Nearly 200 years ago there were two Scottish brothers named John and David Livingstone. John had set his mind on making money and becoming wealthy, and he did. But under his name in an old edition of ...

We the people of this new generation highly resolve that those who sacrificed before us shall not have sacrificed in vain. Let justice roll on.