This weekend, as we celebrate fathers here in Australia, I find myself looking into the eyes of a man I never had the privilege of meeting.

My paternal grandfather looks back at me from an old photograph taken several months before his 60th birthday. He has kind eyes, the sort of eyes that make you pause. They say the eyes are a mirror to the soul, and perhaps that is why this photograph speaks to me so deeply.

In it, he is exactly the age I am now.

When the photograph was taken, he could not have known how few months remained to him. He was approaching a milestone birthday, probably imagining there would be more birthdays and many more years ahead. Instead, because of a doctor’s mistake, the flowers given to celebrate his 60th birthday became the flowers that surrounded him during his final hours.

Life can change so suddenly. None of us knows how many pages remain in our story.

As I prepare to celebrate my own 60th birthday, I cannot help wondering what he was thinking as he approached his. Was he making plans, as I am? Looking forward to the years ahead? Did he imagine there would be more family gatherings, more opportunities to serve and more time with those he loved?

He could not have known that 60 would be the year he was called home.

And yet, although he died six years before I was born, I sometimes feel as though I know him better than people I have known for years. That is because my father gave me one of the most precious gifts a child can receive: the stories of those who came before us. Through his reflective storytelling, he kept his father’s memory alive and, in doing so, allowed me to meet my grandfather across the distance of time.

The man I have come to know was a man of action, principle and integrity. A man whose faith was not simply something he spoke about, but something he lived with his hands, his feet and his whole heart.

Born in 1900, he was the eldest son of a landowner in Savitaipale, Finland. For hundreds of years, the family land had passed from father to son. It could have become his inheritance and his future.

But he felt a stirring in his heart that called him elsewhere.

So he left it behind.

He studied theology, became a minister and later worked as a prison officer. He helped relatives find employment and places to live. He cared for those who had fallen on difficult times and helped establish homes and pioneered ministries for people experiencing homelessness, work that continues in Finland today.

His faith was deeply practical. He did not merely tell people that God loved them; his life was a reflection of that love on earth. If someone was hungry, he helped feed them. If they had nowhere to live, he helped them find shelter. If they needed work, he helped open a door. His heart shone for his Heavenly Father, but the light of that faith always found its way into his hands.

One story, in particular, reveals the heart of the man he was.

My grandfather once walked into a children’s home and asked a simple question:

“Which child has no one who comes to visit?”

He did not ask which child was the brightest, the most promising or the easiest to help. He asked for the one who had no one.

When that child was brought to him, my grandfather became the person who returned. He visited the boy regularly, took a personal interest in his life and funded his education until he reached adulthood.

My grandfather knew he could not help every child in that home, but he did not allow what he could not do to prevent him from doing what he could. He chose one child and changed the course of that child’s life.

He could not replace everything the boy had lost, but he made sure that the child who had no one would no longer feel forgotten. He gave him not only an education and the opportunity to build a future, but also the precious knowledge that someone saw him, believed in him and kept coming back.

Perhaps that is what reflecting God’s love looks like: noticing the person standing alone and then continuing to show up, not just once, but faithfully, year after year.

That same spirit of service was also present in the way my grandfather cared for his own family. He cooked, baked and cleaned, qualities that were far from common in a man born at the beginning of the last century. He did not believe that caring for a home and family made a man less of a man. He understood that true strength is often found in service.

And when my father told stories about him, one thing always became clear: to his children, there could not have been a better father.

But his story does not live only in the memories of his family.

When I have visited Savitaipale, people have stopped me to tell me what my grandfather did for them. They have shared how he helped them during times of need, when life was difficult and perhaps hope was wearing thin.

Imagine that.

A man has been gone for 66 years, yet the echoes of his kindness can still be heard in the place where he once lived. His footsteps have long since faded from its roads, but the good he did continues to walk through the memories of others.

Those encounters have taught me something about legacy. It is not built through grand speeches, impressive titles or having one’s name displayed for everyone to see. Often, it is built quietly, in a meal prepared, a job found, a door opened, a burden shared, a family given somewhere safe to live.

One day, the things we owned will belong to someone else, and many of our achievements will be forgotten. But the love we gave will continue living in the hearts of those who received it.

What a legacy.

We are each given a certain number of days on this earth. Some receive many; others, far too few. We cannot choose their number, but we can choose what we pour into them.

We can spend our lives gathering possessions, chasing success, seeking recognition or pursuing our own happiness at the expense of others. We can become so focused on getting ahead, being admired or building a comfortable life that we fail to notice the people struggling beside us.

Yet so much of what the world tells us to pursue eventually loses its shine, while the love we give and the good we do continue long after we are gone. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the gifts of this life, but they begin to fade when placed beside a life devoted to serving others, loving one’s family and investing in what is eternal.

My grandfather kept eternity before his eyes while he lived. He knew where he was going. He knew that he knew.

That did not mean he wanted to die. He loved life and wanted more years with the people he loved. He was not ready to leave them. But during his final hours, when he understood that his time had come, he surrendered his fierce will to live into the hands of the God he had trusted all his life.

His beloved wife, my grandmother Elina was beside him.

She told me that near the end, he lifted his eyes and his face began to shine as he saw relatives who had gone before him coming to take him home.

And then he closed his eyes.

There is something profoundly moving about a man who spent his life looking towards eternity finally seeing home draw near.

When I picture that moment, I can hear the words of Jesus welcoming him home:

“Well done, good and faithful servant.”

But there is one more part of his story that has remained in my heart.

When my grandfather was laid to rest in our family burial place in Savitaipale, an elderly woman stood at a distance and quietly watched the funeral proceedings. She did not step forward while the mourners were gathered. She simply waited.

After everyone had left, she walked to his grave and placed a small bunch of wildflowers upon it.

With them, she left a note bearing the words of Jesus:

“What you have done to the least of these, you have done unto Me.”

No grand wreath. No public tribute. Just wildflowers gathered by hand and a few words that revealed the measure of the man being buried.

Perhaps she was one of the people he had helped. Perhaps he had met her in a moment when she felt forgotten by everyone else. I may never know her story, but she knew his, and she wanted his family to know that his kindness had mattered.

To me, those wildflowers are more beautiful than any monument could ever be.

My grandfather once prayed, “Give my sons, their children and all the generations that come after me compassionate and forgiving hearts.”

He understood that faith could not simply be passed down like land or possessions; each generation would have to choose its own path with God. But he prayed that compassion and forgiveness would take root in the generations following him. Now, all these years later, I find myself standing within that prayer, humbled by it and longing to live in a way that honours it.

When I consider my grandfather’s life, I feel humbled. His example brings me to my knees and makes me question how I am using the days entrusted to me.

Who will be warmer because I lived?

Whose burden will be lighter because I noticed?

Will someone who feels unseen encounter something of God’s love through me?

What am I doing today that will still carry goodness when I am no longer here?

Oh, how I wish I were more like him.

I wish I could have known him. I wish I could have sat at his table, listened to his voice and watched those capable hands at work. I wish our world had more people like him, people who quietly choose compassion over comfort, service over status and faithfulness over recognition.

But perhaps I do know him.

I know him through my father’s memories. I know him through the family he loved, the people he helped and the work that continues because he once said yes to the stirring in his heart. I know him in the stories that still surface when I visit Finland. I know him through an elderly woman standing quietly at the edge of a funeral, waiting to leave her wildflowers.

Sixty-six years have passed since my grandfather went home, but his life is still speaking.

Death ended his days, but it did not end his influence. The love he gave entered other lives, and from those lives it travelled onward, like ripples moving across water long after the stone itself has disappeared from sight.

His life was shorter than anyone expected, but it was not small.

And perhaps that is the question his photograph places before me now, as I approach the age he was when it was taken:

Not how many days will I be given but what will I leave within the days I am given?

This Father’s Day, I honour a grandfather I never met but have come to know through the life he lived. And I honour my father, who did more than keep his father’s memory alive by passing these stories on to me. He carried the same values into our family through the way he lived. Like his father before him, he always put his family first, loving us faithfully and sacrificially through every season of life. Through his gentleness, strength and devotion, he gave me my own beautiful reflection of God’s love.

My grandfather’s example did not end with him; it continued to bear fruit in the life of his son, who chose his own walk with God and showed that same love to his family. One father’s love became another father’s stories, and those stories became a legacy carried into the next generation.

May I live my own days well.

May I keep what is eternal before my eyes.

And when my journey is finished, may there remain, in the lives I have touched, even a small echo of the love my grandfather reflected so faithfully, the love of our Heavenly Father.