How will you shape the world your descendants will live in a hundred years from now? An honest, thoughtful response will require introspection and intention. Nothing changes tomorrow unless something changes today. One change can change everything. 

I recently had a long conversation with a well-known author and leadership coach. He is in his early eighties. He has a plan for what he will accomplish through age ninety. He has a larger plan for how his life’s work will be deployed to influence the world a hundred years from now. This is a bit of a mind stretch.

This is not a new line of thinking. Start with the beginning of Jeremiah 29 and notice more than verses 11 and 13. God tells his people they will remain in Babylon for seventy years. (See verse 10.) While one false prophet in particular promised a two-year exile, God told the people this was no camping trip but an enduring relocation. 

God tells his people to make a seventy-year plan. At the end of that plan, there would be a new plan.

How will you shape the world seventy years from now? Live a life God can bless. Such a life amplifies impact. Its ripples reach well beyond its life expectancy. It changes the atmosphere for generations. 

Today is a good day to attend worship and ponder the possibilities of living as a generational change agent. Ask God to fill your thoughts with his vision, his dream for your life. Ask him to blow his fresh breeze through your life to refresh others. Ask him to shape the future so that it bends toward character and compassion, wisdom and worship. 

However many years you and I have left, God can use them to build a better world for future generations. Let’s open ourselves to his possibilities.

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I will live the kind of life God can use to bless future generations.

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Our Father, you have used tools much simpler than me to accomplish beautiful things. Take my life and let it be a tool of your grace and mercy shaping generations to come. Amen.