For the Generations Yet Unborn

“Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!”
Psalm 22:30–31

There is something incredibly powerful about realizing that what God is doing in us right now may impact people who haven’t even been born yet.

Not just our children. Not just our grandchildren. But generations we will never meet.

When Robert and I were dating, we talked about the legacy we wanted to leave behind. Even then, we were thinking about our children and grandchildren and what we hoped to provide for them.

But if I’m being completely transparent, fifteen years ago that conversation looked a lot different than it does today.

Back then, legacy sounded a lot like finances. We wanted to be responsible. We wanted to work hard, save well, and make wise decisions. We talked about leaving enough money so maybe our grandchildren could go to college without worrying about how to pay for it. We wanted to leave our family better off because we had been here.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Scripture calls us to be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us, and we still want to do that.

But wow, has God worked on our hearts. Last night, Robert and I found ourselves talking about legacy again. Fifteen years later, the conversation sounded very different.

Yes, we want to steward well what God has blessed us with financially. But more than anything else, we want to leave behind a heart for the Lord.

We want our children to love Jesus. We want our grandchildren to love Jesus. But it doesn’t stop there. We want them to love Him in such a way that they teach their children to love Him too. And then those children teach their children. And on and on it goes.

That is what struck me when I read Psalm 22:

“Future generations will be told about the Lord.”

And then it goes even further:

“They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!”

Yet unborn.

Think about that for a minute.

There are people who do not even exist yet who could one day hear about the goodness of God because someone in the generation before them faithfully told the next generation who He is.

That changes the way I think about what we are doing right now.

Our responsibility isn’t simply to prepare the next generation for the world. We are preparing the next generation to prepare the generation after them.

Maybe the prayers we pray over our children today become the prayers they someday pray over theirs.

Maybe the way they see us serve becomes the way they learn to serve.

Maybe watching us give generously, forgive when it is hard, worship when life hurts, open our homes, love people well, and trust God when we don’t understand becomes part of the faith they carry into their own homes.

Maybe the conversations happening around our dinner tables today will echo around tables we will never sit at.

That is also why the song The Blessing by Kari Jobe, Cody Carnes, and Elevation Worship has been running through my mind as I’ve thought about these verses.

The song paints this beautiful picture of God’s blessing carrying forward, not stopping with us, but reaching our children, their children, and the generations that follow.

And suddenly, that idea hits differently.

Because I don’t just want my children and grandchildren to inherit what Robert and I have accumulated during our lifetime.

I want them to inherit a testimony of God’s faithfulness.

I want them to know that we prayed for them before they were even born.

I want them to know that we chose to follow Jesus, not perfectly, but faithfully.

I want them to see a faith that was real enough to carry into their own homes and then hand to their children.

Because legacy is so much bigger than what we leave to our children.

It is what we leave in them.

I can leave money that will eventually be spent. I can leave possessions that will eventually break, be sold, donated, or thrown away. I can leave a house that someday belongs to someone else.

But what if I leave behind people who know the Lord?

People who love His Word.

People who know how to pray.

People who recognize His faithfulness.

People who serve others because Jesus served them.

People who tell their children, “Let me tell you what God has done.”

And then those children tell theirs.

Two generations.

Three generations.

Ten generations.

Maybe even a thousand.

I will never know most of their names.

They will never know mine.

And that’s okay.

Because the goal was never for future generations to know our names.

The goal is for them to know His.

Psalm 22 ends with four words that I cannot stop thinking about:

“He has done it.”

What a legacy that would be.

For generations from now, long after Robert and I are gone, for someone in our family to gather their children around and tell them about the faithfulness of God.

For a child yet unborn to know Jesus because someone told someone, who told someone, who told someone.

Fifteen years ago, I wanted to leave my grandchildren enough to help pay for college.

Today, I still hope we can bless them in practical ways.

But even more, I pray we leave them something money could never buy.

A faith worth passing down.

May our children and our children’s children know Him. May they experience His presence and His faithfulness in their own lives.

May they tell their children.

And may those children tell theirs.

So that two, three, ten, or even a thousand generations from now, people we will never meet are still telling the story of a faithful God.

And may generations yet unborn be able to look back and declare:

He has done it.