Will you be an ancestor, or a ghost?

Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called “Long Time Coming.” Before performing it on Broadway, he told a story about his dad, who wasn’t around very much while he was growing up. The story he told on stage was that in the days before his first child was born, his dad drove 500 miles unannounced and knocked on his door one morning. 

They sat down to have a breakfast beer at 11am, and this all was an unexpected and rare occurrence for his dad, who was not a talkative man nor one to drive 500 miles unannounced. 

Eventually, during the course of this breakfast beer, Bruce’s dad looked at him and said “You’ve been very good to us.” Bruce nods his head, acknowledging that he had. He had been a financial blessing, and so on.

His dad went on, “And I wasn’t very good to you.” 

Bruce said in that moment, the room was just shocked silent. Here’s what he said about the encounter:

“to my shock, ya know, the un-acknowledgeable was being acknowledged...if I didn't know better I would've sworn an apology of some sort was being made, and it was. Here in the last days before I was to become a father, my own father was visiting me to warn me of the mistakes that he had made, and to warn me not to make them with my own children. To release them from the chain of our sins, my fathers, mine and our fathers before, that they may be free.” 

He went on to say something I’ve never forgotten. He said that in our children’s lives, we are either ghosts or ancestors. Those are the two options. Ghosts lay their mistakes and burdens upon their children and haunt them, and when they are gone they just float away.

But ancestors...ancestors stick around and continue to bear fruitful effects long after they're gone. 

Ancestors bless us, but ghosts haunt us. (And of course, it’s applies beyond children.)

Springsteen said on that day his father was petitioning him to take an ancestral role in his kids lives after being a ghost for a long, long time. He said, “It was the greatest moment in my life with my dad, and it was all that I needed.”

That story stuck in my throat the first time I heard it, and I haven’t stopped telling it since. The language of “ancestor or ghost” strikes me, a new picture for the well-worn paths of blessing and curse laid out all through Scripture (and quite clearly at the end of Deuteronomy).

I think the reason it grabs me so much is because, like any aging human, my mortality is tapping me on the shoulders (more accurately—the knees…my knees keep telling me they will wear out before the rest of me does). It keeps feeling like life is speeding up somehow. A few weeks ago I created a new note and titled it “2022 To Dos.” Then I stared at it and was like, “Did I really just do that? And is it really 2024…already?”

Recently I had to get a CT scan on my sinuses, to see if I need surgery. The nice physicians assistant put my head in a small spaceship, whirled something around it a few times, and then said come have a seat here at this computer while you wait for the doctor.

As I sat down I looked at the computer, and, taken aback, said “Is that my skull?!”

(yes, that’s an actual picture that I took in the doctor’s office)

“Yep!” she said. “You have nice teeth.” Then she just left me in there, in a room by myself, looking at my skull. It was in that moment that I began planning my mid-life crisis (I kid, I kid).

It was a memorable gut-check though, that life is passing by quicker than I’d like. A cold reality that when I look like that it will be far too late to shape my legacy for my kids, my church, my neighbors and friends.

Two stories stick out to me from the Old Testament that put flesh on the idea of becoming an ancestor or a ghost.1

On the ancestor side, it’s hard to look past Abraham, the OG ancestor of our faith. The childless old man past Social Security age who “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6).

Hebrews 11 discusses his legacy in glowing terms, and shows his continual trust in God was rooted in a different vision—that he looked to “…the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:10).

He looked past the comforts of life, the ability of his flesh, the familiarity of home, because he was seeking a better country:

¹⁶ But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Hebrews 11:16

On the ghost side, I think of Lot’s wife, whose eyes go in a different direction than Abraham and Sarah’s. Her eyes turn back to her wayward city, to the life she was leaving behind, even though she was warned, and whoosh. She’s gone.

Her legacy haunts instead of blesses, serves as a cautionary tale. Even Jesus says, “Don’t be like her.”

This is what I wrestle with in these moments of these particular years of life. Because too often my eyes are, in a sense, like Lot’s wife. Not looking at sinful things even, but at things that don’t ultimately matter. Time wasters that end up character shapers. Good things, even, that aren’t ultimate things, not things that will matter when my skull looks like that.

You don’t get the legacy of Abraham with the eyes of Lot’s wife, after all.

2024 is already speeding by. February is a short month. I’ll blink and it’ll be over. It won’t be long, Lord willing, that I am asking “Is it really 20__?” And then at some point my legacy will be set.

I keep learning that the small things matter. What my eyes are prone to look at, and how much (and how long) those things matter. Small moments with my kids. A minute to laugh with my wife amidst all the chaos. Conversations that might not have happened. Words that may not have been said. Phone calls that may not have been made.

I hope that—in the words of the Old Testament—when I am “gathered to my people,” that my people will gather warmth from me—light that points them to a city to come.