What Are You Leaving Behind?

DNA is the fundamental and distinctive characteristics or qualities of someone or something, especially when regarded as unchangeable. Wherever you go, you leave a little bit of DNA behind. What does that look like? It might be skin cells, maybe a stray hair, or even a fingerprint. Even when we try to be untraceable, there is always something left behind that can tell a scientist that we were there at one time or another. What about the everyday people who walk around without microscopes and chemical labs, can they tell if you paid them a visit? What are we leaving behind with the people and places we go?

Everyone leaves an impression. They say a first impression is the most important. It only takes someone three seconds to decide what they think of you. One quick glance at your clothing, your body language, your demeanor, and your mannerisms and their minds are made up. It is nearly impossible to reverse the first impression and with every new encounter, another impression is made. An impression is only left in the mind and just like it took them three seconds to “know” you, they will forget you. We must leave more than just an impression.

We have the opportunity to leave something much better than DNA or a first impression. We get to leave behind a legacy. A legacy of love, hope, and faith. We want to live a life so that when we leave this earth people will still feel our fingerprints all over them. We want our love to be so entangled and intertwined in their very essence that there is never any doubt that we were there. We want them to feel hope because we believed in them. We want them to live out the life we spoke into them. We want them to dream with hope because we introduced them to a God that makes all things possible.

We want them to remember that we took the time to listen to them with kind ears never giving judgment. We want them to remember our embrace and the Peace of God that came with it. We want to leave them knowing that the times you touched their lives were ordained by God himself.

Every new day is a new opportunity to make a difference in somebody’s life. When we choose to live with purpose, we choose to leave behind more than DNA. We choose to leave the power of love. In John 13:34 we find words that sum up our mission here on earth, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know you are my disciples if you love one another.”. Let us strive to leave behind a legacy of love embedded deeper than DNA, stronger than a first impression but forever stamped into the hearts of everyone we pass each and every day.