I love old photographs! They capture a moment in time and tell of people's lives whose stories are long lost to memory. This photo is of the 1926 graduating class of nurses at Tacoma General Hospital. The signed picture is of my wife Nancy's Gramma Jean, whom I had the privilege of knowing in her waning years. She loved to play games, especially Ten thousand, a dice game using six dice. When she won a round, a wry smile would appear at the corner of her mouth. She grew up in northern Wisconsin among dairy farms and rolling hills. Nancy and I had the honor and privilege of attending her family reunion while we were in seminary. We miss her! The photographer, Robert M. Smith of Tacoma, had his studio in the Jones Building from 1923 to 1928 and then at 753 Broadway from 1929 through 1935. My Aunt Erma would work much of her life just down the street as the elevator lady at the Puget Sound Bank.

Thirty-four years after Robert Smith took this photograph, Mamma gave birth to me at Tacoma General Hospital. I wonder if these nurses cared for Mamma or held me as a baby in the hospital nursery. All these nurses have lived out their lives and passed on, their presence on this earth no more noticeable to us than the rustling of the wind through Autumn leaves. Yet, without knowing how, their lives have touched our lives through the care given, maybe to our grandparents or soldiers who fought courageously in World War II. I wonder if any of these nurses were stationed at Pearl Harbor when the planes attacked the base. Without knowing their stories, I am grateful for each of them and the care they gave, just as I am thankful for all the nurses now who provide care for us amid such extraordinary circumstances!

This photo will be one-hundred years old in just three years. Will anybody wonder about the photos taken of us when we appear as strangers to them one hundred years from now? Will the earth still be spinning on its axis? Will the moon still be hung in space, providing soft, pale light to the night? Will Jesus yet be tarrying, patiently waiting for more to come home through putting their trust in Him? Or will Jesus have already returned?

Looking at this photo, I find it impossible to know the legacy of these women's lives. Yet, I have been thinking about the legacy of my own life. The legacy of my own making will be lost to remembrance just as the lives of these women have faded away like an old photograph. Yet, the legacy of the Holy Spirit's making will outlive time and space-like gold, silver, and precious stones surviving the fire. I suspect the legacy with the most import is how Jesus loved others through us while we were on the planet. While basking in the ocean of His love, how has His love overflowed to others? They say you can't take anything with you when you die. However, we can take-by grace through faith-the loving relationships He built through us while on the earth. Everything else will be forgotten, but the love which the Lord poured through our lives to others will be remembered forever.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:17 (RSV)

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.
Romans 5:3 (RSV)

For we know in part and prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away with. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:9 (NASB)