The month of August has come and gone and the inexorable flow of time will soon bring us into fall. As the seasons change and I’ve gotten a little older (I’d like to say “mature,” but that would be a stretch, since age doesn’t always bring maturity) I sometimes contemplate what impact, if any, my existence has had on the world in which we live. What will I leave behind?
For many years one of my life ambitions was to write a hymn and that it be published in a hymnbook; an old fashioned, hard cover hymnbook, with the lyricist’s and composer’s names and life dates just above the treble staff on the page. I wanted people to sing the song a hundred years from now and notice my name and wonder who I was, and then go look to see if I’d written other hymns. My songwriting, except for a mere few works, has leaned more toward the country gospel style than toward the traditional hymn style, so maybe that will never come to be. On the other hand, I’ve had two CDs and twenty songs recorded and archived at the Library of Congress, which is something not a lot of folks can say. And, really, that’s just vanity.
So I guess I should just concern myself more about the things that are important. Not the material things. Not the pension plan. Not the house. Not the fancy vacations. The important things: Family. Friends. Others. Because (like it says in Matthew) where your treasure is, there your heart is also. What do you treasure? Where is your heart?