What we do in love will last

​The older I get, the more I wonder about the stories that will be told when I die. What stories are going to stick? I don't say that in an "oh, I think I'm going to die next week" sort of way. I just think to fully look at the story of the life we're living, we have to at least wonder what stories will be told about our lives when we're gone.

I always find it revealing - the stories people tell about the dead in the immediate aftermath of their passing. I find in particularly interesting when "famous" people pass on.

Earlier this year, Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. I've always been a bit of a Lakers fan so I followed this story. It's interesting - the newspapers highlighted all of the basketball accomplishments Bryant had achieved. Reporters on the outside looking in. But his friends, the people Kobe did life with, they told completely different stories. None of them were related to his basketball career.

They told stories of Kobe helping them in hard times, creating opportunities for women because he was raising daughters, donating money and resources to those in need, putting a good word in for friends so they'd get the "lucky break" in their job they'd been looking for.

For people close to Kobe, the stories that stuck, the stories they couldn't wait to recall and tell, they were the things Kobe did out of love, not with his basketball talent. They were stories about the heart Kobe gave, not the possessions or awards he had accumulated.

This week, Christians will celebrate Christmas. The story of a God who lovingly left paradise to be humbly made human through a birth in a cold and lowly manger. Christians love telling that story; it's a story that sticks.

It sticks almost much as the final chapter in his story. The day Christ marched peacefully to a death on the cross. The cross where he lovingly turned to a criminal and said, today you're joining me in paradise. The cross where he lovingly asked God to forgive the people who hung him there.

The stories that stick about Christ aren't the sermons he preached. Oh, we can read about them, but the stories that stuck are stories about the man who hung out with lepers when no one else would. The man who fed the hungry when no one else cared to. The man who lovingly healed people on Sundays when the religious laws forbade him to do so.

Christ lived with a radical love because he was radically interested in leaving behind a story that wouldn't blow by like it never happened.

More and more, I find myself interested in that same thing.

More and more, I find myself asking, how many things am I doing in love?