[Audio not available]

LEGACY & THE HAND OF GOD
This month we launch our back-to-school season in a playful way.  We are remembering the 1970s. 
Honoring our legacy is one of the Five Root values that we may discern in the Ten Commandments.  One’s legacy refers to one’s history, both personal as well as communal.
We build our present experience on the foundation of past experience.  Experience moves forward with us as memory.  What we remember about the past, informs how we will engage our present challenges.
Honoring one’s legacy is a Root Value because remembering the past is not always easy.  It requires a prayerful consideration of one’s experience, both the good and the bad.  It means bringing the past forward into the present.  It allows a person to learn the lessons of the past – to recognize where the power of God is at work in every part of life so that we can stand confidently in the present moment.
This month we playfully remember the 1970’s as a way to lift up the importance of Legacy.  What do you remember of this era? 
The 70’s began on the wave of social movements of the 1960’s.  The Vietnam War was raging.  Peace protestors marched, having learned the legacy of the Civil Rights movement.  The 70’s began on a wave of civic responsibility. 
Then Watergate happened: Deep Throat, Woodward and Bernstein, John Dean, the Saturday Night Massacre.  The United States entered a constitutional crisis, a genuine power struggle between the Presidency and the Congress.  In the end, it was resolved in faithful sadness. 
Following Watergate the mood of the nation shifted from civic responsibility, to mistrust of civic institutions.  Watergate became a symbol of what many believed to be a loss of public integrity.  Then Saigon fell, the first lost war in America’s memory.  And then the Oil Embargo.  A difficult decade came to an even more tragic end when in November 4, 1979 the American Embassy in Iran was taken over by rioting students and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. 
The 70s were a difficult time in American history.  But in the midst of the struggle there was also blessing.  In 1971, Intel developed the world’s first microprocessor, a first step toward the computer revolution of the 1980s.  In this decade institutions became friendlier.  In 1970 Robert Greenleaf published an essay called, “The Servant as Leader,” expanded into a book in 1977 called Servant Leadership, and there began to circulate notions that would transform the meaning of “leadership” forever.  Corporations began to recognize the short-comings of hierarchical organizations and began to experiment with “flatter” structures. 
These are examples of America’s Legacy from the 1970’s, some good, some bad.  Divine blessing is in the midst of all of it.  You have your own memories, stuff that would never make it in the history books. 
Honor your own personal Legacy, and see the hand of God.