Your Final Portrait – Pursuing a Simple Life of Great Wealth or Happiness?

By Lynn Baber –

Hindsight is 20-20. Each of us will look back at the end of our life and clearly see the results of each decision made. Were you prepared for the opportunity that knocked only once or did you miss what should have been your shining moment?

At the end of your life you will not regret any thing. Your blessings and regrets will all be somehow associated with a relationship, not an object.

Create a snapshot of the end of your life in your mind’s eye. This is the final picture that will ever be taken of you. This will be your legacy, your memory, your gift to those who remain when you move to your eternal home.

What does your picture look like? Imagine there is soft music playing in the background, a gentle warm breeze blowing the hair from your cheek… take a moment to develop your picture.

Final Portrait – Luxury and Abundance

Some lives produce a final portrait with rich and luxurious furnishings. Perhaps a crystal flute filled with the finest amber champagne rests beside your elbow. Can you hear the bubbles burst as they rise to the surface and disappear? The artwork adorning each wall is precious and rare.

Perfectly framed by golden candelabra and ornate columns, your costume is an original design and tailored to fit your perfect size 4 figure like a glove. The jewels in your ears and on your fingers are the stuff of dreams.

Sounds like a pretty good picture, doesn’t it? But you are alone.

Final Portrait – a Life of Great Wealth

Contrast the first picture of privilege and ease with one where the furniture is worn and unremarkable. The decor is so insignificant that it fades, unnoticed, into the background.

The shelf above the tallest head in the snapshot is filled with photographs of other people from other times. Perhaps one day this final portrait will join ranks with the others.

Nothing about the furnishings or fashion preserved in the photo is worth noting. But there is something special captured in this final image. The photo is filled with people and animals.

The light of shared love beams from each of the many faces in the photograph, giving evidence of wealth that is beyond calculation.

Surrounded by Love

And there you are, seated among friends and family; generations of spirits connected together in this life and who will meet again after each of their own final portraits is completed.

When you finally have that moment to examine the length and breadth of your life; when your vision is 20-20; I guarantee you will not regret any piece of jewelry, antique, item of couture or cuisine, that you never got.

Once blessed with 20-20 vision all that will matter is who joined you in this last snapshot. Relationships can only be shared with a ‘who’ and never with a ‘what.’

Pursuing Simplicity

As you sort through all the stuff and relationships in your life trying to decide who is important and what is not, consider the image of your final portrait.

Nothing of ultimate value takes up any space on a shelf or in a closet. Love is only shared with someone who can love you back and is the only wealth you can take with you as well as leave behind.

God is simple. Nature is simple. Children and animals are simple. Embrace all of them in your life and your final portrait will bless you every day until it is finally placed on that high shelf.

Lynn Baber is a Christian writer who shares simple messages of faith over fear by reducing complex issues into simple either/or choices. Lessons learned throughout her forty year career as a business consultant, motivational speaker, and World and National Champion horse breeder, trainer, and judge, are shared in print, in person, and in the round pen working with troubled horses. Read more on her blog, Simple truth – Simple Faith: http://lynnbaber.net/. Follow her ministry message on Amazing Grays Ministry: http://amazinggraysministry.com/. Lynn is the author of Amazing Grays, Amazing Grace and He Came Looking for Me.