The Legacy of Ball Face

Have you ever had one of those surreal moments?

I had one this week during an email conversation with a contact from my gap year. It turns out that an incident that occurred during my time at their church has become a bit of a legend - still talked about today! I was quite taken aback by this.

The incident wasn’t a great message I preached.

It wasn’t a fantastic prayer, or conversation I had.

It wasn’t that I’d helped change someone’s life.

It was that I was hit in the face with a ball during a (out of control) game of dodgeball, and I completely lost my temper. I yelled at the young people, and sent them all into a stunned silence, which later earned me the nickname of ‘Ball Face’.

According to the email with my contact

“You have become a living legend in these parts. Some think that ‘Ball face’ is a myth but only a handful of us know the real story. Your legacy lives on”

As human beings, we all want to leave our mark, our legacy, upon the world. We all wonder how we will be remembered; what will be said at our funeral; whose life have we impacted? Decisions we make, actions we take, can all be effected by how we want to be remembered.

But what about those moments when we aren’t thinking about what we will leave behind? In one moment of weakness, I left a legacy I didn’t intend. I am remembered as the ‘ball face’ at this youth club. Was that what I wanted? No.

When thinking about leaving a legacy, often thoughts turn to the big, grandiose actions you can take. Who can we proclaim the good news to? How much money will it take to be remembered by a charity or project? What marks do I need to get in my exam? How many hours volunteering do I need to do?

While big things will help you be remembered, don’t forget about the little things. The everyday decisions count. The actions you do daily count. We all make mistakes, but lets drown them out by living well and displaying God in all we do. If we focus on leaving a legacy for him, we will most likely leave a better legacy than one of our own name.

The problem with legacies is that however hard you try to create your legacy, it is ultimately other people who decide how you are remembered. Those who focus on what they are leaving behind can become dissatisfied with their lives when they don’t come up their expectation, or become prideful by all they have achieved. Eventually, such people will be remembered in these ways, as that is the main focus of their life, not what they actually want to be remembered for. The big actions may be remembered fleetingly, but it is the small, consistent actions we take that become our legacy.

I may be remembered as ‘Ball face’ by the young people, but the email went on to say how positively our gap year group was remembered by the leaders and others within the church. As an individual, I may be ‘Ball face’, but our group left a legacy of how to live life well as Christians in community. We didn’t do anything great; we just lived together, focussing on God and making his name great, daily.

What legacy are you leaving behind in your daily life? Is it something you are proud of? Does your everyday life reflect how you want to be remembered?

Spiritual Check Up

I hate going to the doctors. I’ve been coughing for the past few weeks and finally decided to go get checked out. But I hate making that call. I’m always nervous they’re going to tell me I’m imagining things and to stop wasting their time. That has never happened, of course, but I still would rather suffer until someone forces me to go. Then I know I’m truly sick. But how often could I have avoided unnecessary pain and illness by going earlier?

Going to the doctors wasn’t as bad as I thought. They checked me out and told me what I needed to do, and all’s well. My mind is at ease. I can get on with life.

Being ill these past few days, and my unwillingness to call the doctors made me think of Luke 5:30 – 32.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
(NIV)

While the Pharisees and other ‘righteous’ people continued to view themselves as healthy, they would not need Jesus. The ‘sinners’ who were so aware of their own sin, appreciated Jesus more and came to him more readily to  be healed of that sin.

While I am reluctant to see my doctor, my fiancé is the opposite. Because he has poor health, he has a great relationship with his GP and will happily go to them with even the slightest change in his health. I, on the other hand, take my health for granted and rarely admit to being ill.

We can be the same in our spiritual lives, as Jesus’ words show. Those who are new in their relationships with him seem to be very aware of when they mess up and go immediately to him. Those of us who have been 'healthy' and in a relationship with him for longer can be very different.

Even though we are saved, we are can often carry around sin for a long time until we can’t ignore its presence any more and come to God for forgiveness. We pretend everything is fine, yet we know deep down we should go for a spiritual check up to sort it out. The sin can then seep into every part of our life, poisoning our efforts, and we feel like we’re not communicating with God as we used to. We can fear his wrath and anger, and that stops us from making that call to him.

But just like a quick visit to our doctor, placing our sin before God and asking for forgiveness is never as bad as we think it will be, and we feel so much better afterwards.

I encourage you to spend time with God this weekend having a quick ‘spiritual check up’. What spiritual battles are you ignoring within yourself? What does God want to say to you, but you won’t give him the time to?

(Don’t forget to check out my fundraising page for EMASS – I'm walking 34 miles in 2 days!)