I don’t think legacy is something you craft, I think it’s something that emerges, I think it is a found thing, like an artifact at an archeological dig site. Of course that doesn’t stop us from trying, the globe and history are littered with mankind’s attempts to build our way out of oblivion through conquest, statues, and grand gestures. But a legacy, by definition, cannot be discovered by the one who leaves it and is therefore unearthed and, this is the really hard bit, interpreted by those who come after.

If you’re of the serious and sober minded type I would point to the time capsule records carried aboard the spacecrafts Voyager 1 and 2. Launched in 1977 and containing a very limited assortment of media and instructions out into the void as far as humanity could reach. They carry the fingerprints of an age and through them reveal what the world as it was in 1977 deemed the most important things that could be said about us. A distillation of the best we had to offer pressed into the grooves of a golden disc.

If, perhaps, you are of a more absurd humor bent I may point you to a different example, Parks and Recreation season 3 episode 3. Wherein the intrepid Leslie Knope decides to invite the good people of Pawnee to participate in creating a time capsule to capture their towns moment in history for future generations. There are many great sequences in that episode, all of them hilarious. But as with all great comedy what makes the laughs so hearty is the underlying truths the absurdity points to. The townsfolk come up with a great many ridiculous items, but seemingly none more so than the wild man who handcuffs himself to a bench in Leslie’s office to demand a copy of the pulp fiction novel “Twilight” gain inclusion. 

As the episode moves along, however, something strange happens. The crazy man becomes the sane one. Spoiler alert, his reason for the books inclusion turns out to have real stakes and an even bigger heart. An estranged teenage daughter, pushed away by a painful divorce. He doesn’t really care about the book or the story it tells he cares about the person who cares about the book. If he can just get “Twilight” in the capsule maybe that will be enough to melt the ice between them. And this reveal recasts everyone involved in the episode. The ridiculous list of items presented include, David Lee Roth's autobiography and the remains of a turkey. And suddenly the twilight book is the most sane suggestion. Why? Because it’s not an item, it’s a key to a relationship. 

How could you possibly truly capture what is most important to a person in a pile of objects or a collection of tiny waveforms pressed in gold? None of the stuff matters, not really. An observer who cannot comprehend what the chaotic, noisy, complicated, painful, beautiful, joyous space between us feels like cannot possibly find interest in the talismen that represent that space. 

The twilight book is not a twilight book, it’s the hope of a relationship with a beloved daughter after a hard rain of suffering. The music hurtling through the cosmos is not a jumble of sound waves frozen in metal hoping to find some being with the capacity to craft an appropriate decoder ring, they are the sounds of our souls crying out to be heard. 

A legacy is not a forced arrangement of decisions and carefully curated image making, it is the distillation of a million million interactions, and the residue left on all those souls rise up to meet one another and reform a life in post-living color.

So, how do you build a legacy worth having? Stop building and start living. Pastor John Haynes was one such person who understood this. He didn’t have an eye on the legacy, he had both eyes and an entire formidable spirit focused on the prize in front of him, the soul within arms reach. And into such souls he poured as much fierce love and loyalty as could be held, and then kept pouring until it overflowed. 

In such a way he built a chorus of time capsules, each a recording of his compassion and calling, his tenacity and tenderness, his grace and courage. 

So that today, when the dust of his life is brushed away it reveals a glorious find. The sparkling and radiant legacy of a man who did not care to be lifted up but instead chose to lift another up so that all men may be drawn unto Him, to Jesus. He chased men through prisons, drew in the very best of sinners and ruined them for the world, he invited whoever would come alongside to walk the winding, broken path even if they stumbled their way through it. And person by person, piece by piece he built a life lived well. Up to today, where I stand, as do so many of you, as one in his legacy. Late to it, arriving in the twilight of his brilliance, and yet standing here still, deeply moved, and powerfully convinced of God’s love for me because of the legacy of Pastor John Haynes. 

Well done good and faithful servant, we’ll see you again soon enough and until we do we will miss you fiercely.

Genesis 1:1-5 (NLT)
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.

Once upon a time, I decided that my little girl, Ainsleigh Michelle (a.k.a. Peanut), needed a doll house. Christmas was on its way and I was determined that she was going to have one, and not just any one. No sir, we had spent many an hour at the local Hobby Lobby and my Peanut had stared up at the massive victorian wonders with awe and desire. Her dolls were going to have a nicer home than we did but that was OK. 

Pennies were saved, dollars were socked away, and at last the day arrived. I made the purchase and took home a box straight from pandora.

If you have never attempted to build one of these dollhouse kits let me enlighten you. When you open the box you immediately know you are in trouble. Aside from the walls nothing else is recognizable as part of a house, and there are several thousand pieces. I am no stranger to construction, I am a hobby furniture builder and know my way around a saw and a joint, but this thing was intimidating!

To make matters worse, they put a large and vibrant picture of the completed house on the front of the box so that little girls believe there is a fully formed home on the inside of the cardboard and they do not understand why they cannot play with it on Christmas morning.

As soon as the wrapping paper was cleared I set to work. Pulling out all the pieces and sorting them into like piles before I found the instruction novel at the bottom of the box. I have built dressers from a fallen log that took less steps than this house. Over the next 3 weeks I worked on that thing like it was my full time job. I’d come home from work and change clothes while Ainsleigh waited impatiently for us to get started. She provided the giant blue eyes and motivation, and I provided the superglue ravaged fingers and resolve.

When we arrived at the cedar shingles that came in a giant bag and were placed individually I nearly broke. One at a time, cut and shaped to fit and held until the glue set, for days. And then came the electrical wiring for the lights and the fan, the wallpaper carefully selected and applied, and finally the furniture artfully chosen and placed. We do not have time to talk about how we decided it needed a yard with a fence and it should be on wheels.

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“The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”

It’s Christmas morning and God is standing over the raw materials He has just called into being. The initial inhale into violent exhale of creation. The cosmic powers have been brought to heel and now it is time to craft them into something beautiful. There is one reason that He is doing all of this.

Us.

Heaven and Earth are great and all, but this is for His kids! This will be no mere planet, it will be a paradise full of wonder and every good thing. It must be perfectly right! 

If gravity were just 1 part in 10³⁴ stronger or weaker, stars (and therefore life) could not form in a stable way.

If the cosmological constant were off by even 1 part in 10¹²⁰, the universe would either collapse back in on itself or expanded too fast for galaxies.

Water expands when it freezes, making ice less dense than liquid water. If this weren’t true, aquatic life would be extinguished every winter.

And God saw that it was good.

I am not sure how, but we usually read this account and get into arguments about literal creation v poetic representation of creation. That is like reading Pinocchio and arguing about the kind of wood the puppet was made out of. If you missed the point of the story any further you’d loop back around on it and catch it from behind.

This is not a blueprint being drawn up by a harried engineer. This is the fire of passionate creation being formed just so by a creator that cares down to His toes. He does not move on to the next day’s work until he has perfected what He intended for us. This is a labor of love by the embodiment of love.

I am an earthly father. I love my children with a white hot flame and there is nothing good I would withhold from them. If I, being earthly, know how to build dollhouses for my daughters because it will delight their hearts, how much more my Father in Heaven has crafted for me in this universe I get to live and play in!

Genesis 1:1-5 (NLT)
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
בְּרֵאשִׁית ׀ בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים ׀ אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃

When I was about 10 years old, my best friend and I were out riding our bikes. This would have been 1989, and that alone should tell you what kind of adventure this was. Mid-summer, South Texas heat, short shorts, and flip-flops on a hand-me-down BMX bike.

I had no BMX skills, just the equipment. The most adventurous things my pegs had ever been involved in were carrying Trey, the best friend, when his bike was out of commission. On this day, we were doing laps in the neighborhood, seeing who was out and who may have some fresh Kool-Aid on offer. Talking about 10-year-old boy things and making lazy arcs from one side of the street to the other.

The crash was a sight to see. Trey was talking to me and making a deep loop around me at the same time. As he came along my left side, he sped up but didn’t look ahead. His head turned to me, not even a hint of what was coming. He plowed headlong into the back of a big ole conversion van.

You may not know what a conversion van is if you are a younger reader. My description cannot do it justice, so please give it a quick Google. Suffice it to say that it was an immovable object with a prominent ladder hanging off the back of it. Trey found a rung with his forehead while his chest got up close and personal with his handlebars. I will not tell you of the rest of the impact points.

He bounced off the thing like they were both made of rubber, and the pile of twisted limbs and cockeyed bike parts was cartoonish, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I swear there was genuine concern under the laugh, but Trey may not have caught the subtlety.

When I got to him and pulled him free of the wreckage, he was not breathing. Do not be alarmed; he wasn’t dead; he just had the wind knocked out of him. The kind of thing we used to shrug off as kids that, if it happened to us now, we would be in the ER and laid up for a few weeks of convalescence.

Trey had the timeless look of a boy who knows his breath will return; it always has before, but the anticipation of its arrival borders on doubt.

There is not much you can do for a friend in this situation. You mostly stare at them unhelpfully and occasionally remind them to breathe as if forgetting is the problem.

It is this image that comes to mind when I think of Genesis 1:1. My friend Trey, face full of eagerness, a tinge of anxiety, a lot of determination, and a touch of fear. It is, admittedly, my interpretation of the moment before creation begins, but I believe there is evidence to back me up.

I think most of us imagine creation as a stately progression of enormous objects. And yet if we have discovered anything about the nature of the universe, it is that there is very little of it that is stately or calm. Our sun is a raging inferno of destruction, a clock winding down to an inevitable end. And the dying of that star gifts life to Earth.

When I attempt to imagine the beginning, the real one that this is a poetic image of, I imagine fire and force, chaos submitting to order, God using word to master matter and forge from it a paradise in which to invest a part of Himself.

The breath you draw in before that kind of endeavor would be the electric kind. Oxygen to fuel the fire of the forge.

The first word of the Hebrew Bible is בְּרֵאשִׁית (Bereshit)—“In the beginning.” But ancient rabbinic tradition doesn’t start with what is said. It starts with what is not.

The first letter of the Hebrew Scriptures is bet (ב), not aleph (א)—and that silence is no accident.

According to the Midrash Rabbah, the letter aleph, though first in the Hebrew alphabet, was passed over as the starting letter of the Torah. It represents the unspeakable, the silent breath, the unvoiced potential that precedes all sound. Bet, by contrast, is voiced—it opens outward, like a container, a house (bayit), or a womb.

The rabbis taught that the Torah begins with bet because the true beginning of creation—what comes before “In the beginning”—was a silence so full it could not be written.
A pause.
A breath drawn inward by God.
A waiting.

In this telling, the world is born not first by speech, but by listening.

Creation begins not with “Let there be…”
But with a hush so deep it holds the words to come.

My friend Trey, lying there on the hot pavement, waiting for the moment his breath would return.

It took time, not that long for me, ages for him. And then the solar plexus let go and in swept a giant gulp of air. An inhalation that felt as long as the wait for it. Life flooded his reddened cheeks, tears filled his eyes at the sensation of life inrushing before outrushing again.

Then, finally, he breathed out. It was a laugh mixed with a sob, just one or two. The joy of life rushing over the top of the fear of death and producing the elation that only comes on the heels of hard times.

This is how I see 1:1 playing out. Bet opens the curtains on our grand story. The inhale of deep anticipation before the exhale of furious, dangerous creation. Forces beyond our imagining being brought to heel by a God who makes it look easy.

This is the beginning of the story and everything that comes after carries the same wild energy and wonder. What would life look like for us if we embraced it? If instead of getting lost in the mundane shuffle of life, we filed our lungs with air and prepared a place for the Aleph, the wild beginning, to take root.

This is not a measure of your job’s excitement, your marriage’s passion, nor the enthusiasm with which you attack your hobbies. This is a changing of the lens through which you see your life. God did not create a wild and wonderful universe so that we could hole up in a cubicle and creep towards death and eternity.

He has made you fearfully and wonderfully, He has breathed life into humanity with the same reverence and passion He used to infuse the universe. So, let us find the thread of it. Let us light that torch again. Inhale with God and exhale new creation.