Whenever I hear the word “legacy,” I always think of children. What legacy is each of us leaving to our children and the children of others?

A stroll through the pages of Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder reveals that while life was good, it was certainly not an easy road to walk. What was expected of Almanzo and his siblings when they were growing up on the family farm? Here is a partial list of how the children spent their days.¹

In addition to doing well in school, Almanzo and his brother Royal:

• Replaced soiled hay with fresh, making clean beds for the cows, oxen, calves, and sheep to rest in
• Pitched hay from the haymows into the mangers
• Milked the cows
• Cared for boots and moccasins by rubbing them nightly with tallow
• Trained the calves
• Pumped water for the animals
• Filled the ice house with blocks of ice and packed every one of them in sawdust
• In the wintertime, they chopped the water in the rain barrel every day to keep the barrel from bursting
• Worked to tap the trees and make maple sugar
• Sorted the spoiled fruits and vegetables from the bins in the cellar
• Helped make whitewash and whitewashed the entire cellar
• Harrowed the fields
• Aided with sheep shearing
• Tended to the crops as needed
• Weeded the garden

Their sisters Alice and Eliza Jane had their work cut out for themselves as well as they:

• Cooked and served the meals—and keeping Almanzo fed was no small task!
• Dyed cloth and made clothes, rugs, etc…
• Washed the dishes
• Swept the floors
• Gathered the roots and barks needed to dye the wool

There were still other chores that the siblings all worked on together. The Wilder family:

• Gathered berries
• Loaded up potatoes for sale when the buyer came to town
• Cleaned every last inch of the house—scrubbing, scouring, and polishing
• Planted potatoes and carrots
• Tended to three acres of corn—by hand—to save it from a sudden freeze
• Harvested hundreds of bushels of crops

Yet the list is far from complete! What were the results of their hard work? For the Wilder family, they reaped many blessings, including a happy, healthy family; the comfort of not lacking life’s necessities; and the respect of the townspeople who acknowledged their hard work.

But what happens when things don’t work out the way you expect them to? What happens when you work hard but a child gets sick, the bank account runs out, and you don’t feel that anyone cares in the least about what you are going through?

I think it is during those times that the reality of leaving a legacy for eternity seems to mean so much more. Every one of us has been called by God to be faithful with what He has given us. By teaching our children to do their best at whatever their hands find to do, we train them to leave a legacy.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the talents. In the parable, a very wealthy man leaves on a long journey and entrusts some of his riches to his servants. To one he gave five talents, a very large unit of money; to another he gave two talents; and to a third he gave one. Jesus said each was given his talents according to his ability. The first two servants went to work, building on what their master had given them. The third servant decided it was best to bury the single talent and leave it tucked away for safe keeping.

When the master returned, the servant with five talents had increased his master’s wealth to ten talents. Likewise, the servant with two talents had also doubled his trust and returned four to the master. The servant who had been given one talent had nothing to show for his master’s faith in him.

The master rebuked the final servant for his heart attitude—one of laziness and wickedness. Had the servant wanted to do something with what had been entrusted to him, he could have deposited the money at the bank and earned interest for his master. But he hadn’t bothered.

The other two servants, the ones who gave their master the fruits of their labor, were praised. The master said to them, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matthew 25:23).

The servants were praised equally. That’s my favorite part of the parable. The servant who earned two talents was praised just as the servant who earned five. The results weren’t praised; the faithfulness was. And, I can’t help but wonder if it is exactly how the servant with one talent would have been praised had he only done something with what he’d been given.

When we teach our children to do their best with whatever they have been given, to invest themselves in the things that matter to the heart of God, and to keep their eyes on the One they will ultimately be accountable to, we are training them to leave an eternal legacy. I can think of no other legacy that truly matters. Can you?

Endnotes:

1. Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. A Harper Trophy Book, Harper & Row Publishers, 1971.