This is a story about a house……

A long time ago–about eighty years now, a house was built just above the Columbia River. The couple who purchased the acreage had big plans for their growing family. This house would be different than the other farmhouses built along the Evergreen Highway. They would build it with two stories as the other farmhouses nearby. Instead of little rooms and no view out back with the gleaming river not far below, they added large picture windows adjacent to each other with an unimpeded view of the bluff below them.  And the river. That was the key. They would paint it white, like the other houses. It would have a small front porch, with a sidewalk sloping up to the highway to the mailbox.

The Mrs. planted beautiful Camillas, pink tulips, a snowball bush, wisteria, and of course, bleeding hearts. A picket fence was added with lilies to lean against. The flowers made the property more closed in and set apart from the busy highway at the top of the place.  They never planted anything out back. They wanted to keep the grand view of the gleaming river. The children grew, graduated from school, got married, and had their own families. They brought their children to visit Grandpa and Grandma there.

 

Time passed. The couple wasn’t young any more. The husband, called gramps by his grandchildren, began to slow down. He couldn’t properly care for the house as he did before. He had to hire other people to paint the house, fix the roof, even mow the grass out front. He couldn’t go upstairs much because his knees hurt. One day, he became sick. He got a little better but soon, he died.

The Mrs., called Grandma by both her kids and grandkids, missed Gramps a lot. She wandered through the house, not quite knowing what to do without her husband by her side. She lived many years after Gramps died, but she missed him terribly and somehow, the view of the river didn’t mean as much anymore. One day, she died too.

And then, the house was empty. The kids lived in another town and decided to sell the house. “Someone will love that view,” they said. For years, it stood empty. The grounds began to be overgrown and untidy. So unlike Grandma’s careful gardening. But the flowers continued to bloom, in spite of the weeds growing alongside them.

Finally, someone bought the property. But they didn’t want that old fashioned farmhouse anymore. Yes, the view out the back was really beautiful, but they had room to build bigger and better, so the house came down. All that is left is a large hole where the house once stood.

That little story is true. About the house that once was there and is now gone. The flowers are real. There is a hole that is big, but it seems small to support a house as big as it appeared above it. I’m quite sure there will be a grand home built there. I’ll miss the old farmhouse that stood there for almost a century.

That’s how our lives seem to be. We’re here for such a short time. What kind of legacy will we leave? Just like that house that stood proudly above the river for many years, within a day, it was gone. As I grow older, I think about what my legacy will be. Not the house I lived in, but what my loved ones will remember about me. I’ve been studying the book of James and I was struck by the verse:

Our life is like the morning fog…….