"After all, who is our hope, our joy, our crown of boasting, if it is not you yourselves in the presence of our Lord at His coming?”  I Thessalonians 2:19 ESV

Gone. Eighteen years of work gone. In fact, you can multiply that by four. Seventy-two years of work gone. Eighteen years per child. Sixteen years of high school homeschool documentation totaling more than at least ninety-six separate documents. 

I had sacrificed my career for this. We had taken financial hits for this. Flipping on my new laptop and realizing my backup was incomplete left me stunned. Perhaps some professional can help me find it all someday. All my efforts thus far have been futile.

Fortunately, the transcripts were all safe; the most needed documents. It’s just that the other ones were my careful record of what I had done, which curriculum had been used, which tests they had passed, and with what scores. 

At that moment, as I sat back on my heels and looked at my empty hands and an empty screen, all I could think was, “Well, whatever I did is walking around in four individuals. They are my only record.”

In my mind echoed what Paul said of the Thessalonians, 

"After all, who is our hope, our joy, our crown of boasting, if it is not you yourselves in the presence of our Lord at His coming?”  I Thessalonians 2:19 ESV

It is true. You can’t take it with you. Not even your best and dearest work. Your art, your writings, your career, your home, your cabin, your car. Nothing. The only thing we leave this world with is our soul and the love we showed. 

Jesus spoke of this truth in His parable of the foolish rich man who felt quite satisfied with himself, surrounded by the fruit of his work.

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be required of you. Then who will own what you have accumulated?’ This is how it will be for anyone who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich toward God.”  Luke 12:20-21

We must be rich toward God. Are we rich in good works? In showing love? These things don’t save us, only Christ’s righteousness does, but are we building upon that foundation effectively and in a way that pleases Him?

“…No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” I Corinthians 3:11-15

As women of this generation, we are encouraged to aspire to success and self-fulfillment. I watched a car commercial the other day. A young woman hops in her fancy car after a day working for some Fortune 500 company and talks about all the places she IS going to go and all the things she wants to do. And she can! Nothing is going to stop her! 

In a way, she is right. In today’s America, you can have the opportunity to get a lot of what you want, provided you make the necessary sacrifices. And there is nothing wrong with having those things. But the wise woman is going to make sure she is rich toward God, not just towards herself. 

My experience of losing the documentation of my “life’s work” was sobering. It added new meaning to the verses I had so often heard. They held new meaning for me.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away…So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  I Corinthians 13 1-11 ESV

So dear friends, let’s be about the Lord’s work. Let us love others in word and in deed. Let’s share the truth of who His is, lift the yoke of oppression, and disciple the young. In a word, let’s love others. That is a work that can never be erased.