Psalm 128.

A song of ascents.

¹ Blessed are all who fear the Lord,
    who walk in obedience to him.
² You will eat the fruit of your labor;
    blessings and prosperity will be yours.
³ Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
    within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
    around your table.
⁴ Yes, this will be the blessing
    for the man who fears the Lord.

⁵ May the Lord bless you from Zion;
    may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
    all the days of your life.
⁶ May you live to see your children’s children—
    peace be on Israel.

I think of Frederic Bartholdi finishing the hair and head of the Statue of Liberty. No one of the time could have seen if he'd left the upper reaches unfinished - and if anyone would have, they would have understood, with all the financial hardships of trying to fund the completion of the work - but he had a view that she must be complete. And now that planes fly over and helicopters allow photographers to see her from above, her personality remains vibrant, and she still seems complete. Her legacy continues as symbol because her maker saw her from a viewpoint from above.

One legacy of the climb is, that once we've seen the view from on high, we cannot forget - our view from the valley is changed because we have a new perspective. How God sees us is different than how others see us - and, if we see from that perspective, our anticipation is changed. Our view of our own life's walk, our labor, our wife, our children is tinted by the viewpoint from above - we don't expect that meaninglessness a nihilistic evolutionist or atheist expects from their ground-up point of view. Is his life's work a labor in vain? Then his attitude toward it is going to really suck. Is his wife merely a means to his personal fulfillment? Then she will shrivel, rather than grow - if he doesn't discard her when she no longer meets his needs. Are his children only intelligent monkeys? Then his expectation is self-fulfilling in his nurture, or lack thereof. 

We can value our life, work, spouse, kids because we understand that God values all. Our work is fulfilling in the moment, and can be through eternity. Our wives and children are eternal souls, the pinnacle of creation, of greater value than any material thing. The legacy of God's loving view of us is refracted through our eyes to our labors and those we love in turn; in the sunlight of that top-down view, we and they can grow and flourish.

The payoff of the climb is the view. The legacy of that view, once seen, is that our eyes are forever changed.