By their fruits shall ye know them.  One point of this scriptural acid test is to point us towards the future and permanent effects of what we do and say.  Fruits are the future of a tree.  Fruits are posterity.  And fruits come over and over again.

Does it last (or is it capable of being incorporated into and leading into something meaningful and lasting?)  Does it endure?  If not, it is not of God.

Remember, nothing is meaningful if its ripples aren’t eternal.

Even evil meaningful choices aren’t really meaningful.  Destruction by its nature cannot last.  That which can’t go on, won’t.  By definition, only good choices are eternal (meaningful choices for evil endure only in the sense that they create an absence or lack which endures eternally.  We call this damnation.  If they don’t endure eternally, it is because the soul reverses course–we call this repentance–and accepts a replacement of what they have lost from God–we call this grace).  By their fruits shall ye know them.

Ultimately, meaning is relational.  That which endures are people and our relationships to people.  The future belongs to those who show up.

The conclusion: all true success is dynastic.  By their fruits shall ye know them.

That success must be dynastic is true even in secular terms.

But that truth is deeper and different and truer in the light of the eternities.