AGING AND US…

When getting old was years down the road I used to think about this, “Even to old age I am He; and to gray hairs I will bear you…” (Isaiah 46:4) It was comforting for a faraway time.  Now, it is here!

Will I become useless, invisible, a burden?  Rearing children, work, Eric and I used to be intensely busy.  If we are blessed to grow old, how do we live and move and use that time? My husband, Eric is seventy-six and I am seventy-eight, we talk about it:  Growing old begins when you are young; you build into your heart and soul the person you are continually becoming. Have I grown? Or gone backward?

This morning we read in the Book of Judges.  Joshua and Caleb were over eighty years old.  Forty years earlier they were just two of the twelve spies Moses sent to view the promised land.  Ten brought back a report of giants and walled cities that they could never overcome and the heart of all the people melted.   They had come to the border of a great victory but would turn back, wander in the wilderness and die.

But Joshua and Caleb fully followed the LORD.  We can do that! For as long as we are alive there is purpose! There is useful, loving, humble service to God and your kids, and mankind.  People are watching us old folks.  Will we "mark time" with selfishness!! 

Caleb would not “mark time”.  He said at eighty-five, "And now, behold, the LORD has kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the LORD spoke this word to Moses…now, lo, I am this day eighty-five years old…I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now..." (Joshua 14:10-12)

Spiritual, intellectual, and physical strength is a possibility and an opportunity:  we have time, we are still alive. Yesterday I fasted coffee to pray (I admit, coffee is more interesting than food first thing in the morning).  All day I felt down, low, listless; you can deduct that my body is addicted to it.  The next day I drank my morning coffee with Eric, ate my Ezekiel bread with butter and honey and felt energetic and happy. As I was riding my bicycle the twenty-mile route, it was easier than eight years ago. I was on chemotherapy then.  At seventeen miles back then as I passed a grassy place under shade trees I had a strong urge to lie down in the shade.  It never happened, but today I was riding past the same shady grassy place and felt motivated and strong. So, with energy now what will I do?  How will I invest my life?  Not banking on what is in the past, but looking to the future, how will I, (thank the LORD, along with Eric), how will we fully follow the LORD?  Thinking about Caleb and Joshua.

EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE RIGHT…WHO IS?

The bottom line is…Who is Jesus? It takes sixty-six Books within the Bible to describe Who Jesus is.  Creator, Redeemer, Savior, Friend, King of Kings, LORD of LORDS.  He is the foundation for truth, so He is right.  As Creator God makes the rules.  From the description of Jesus described in the Bible you will come to know what is right.  Begin with “For all the law is fulfilled in one word…you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

I personally come to conclusions and look at the world, the culture, my fellow human beings through a pursuit of Scripture, the Bible.  This is how I seriously intend to make my deductions.  There is good; there is evil in the world.  Knowing the difference is one serious pursuit of my life.  Conclusions about every issue pervasive in America will be after I have searched them out from my continuing study of the Bible. It is that simple. 

That is just the beginning.

Yes, God created the mosquitoes, the flies, the annoying parts of creation, the amazing power in creation: volcanoes, hurricanes, tornados.  If we think it through, this is scary stuff.  But if we think that through, it demonstrates His power.  The sad things happened when Adam and Eve rebelled and ate of the Tree of Good and Evil which God commanded them not to eat. 

If we have a “picture” of Jesus in our heads, but it is not the same Jesus who is described in the sixty-six Books of the Bible, it is not Jesus described in John 1:14. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

How does one “imagine” the greatness of Almighty God Who is All Power, All Knowing and Everywhere Present.  That is the God, Jesus, who keeps your heart beating, “He stretches out the north over the empty place, and He hung the earth on nothing.” (Job 26:7) And rather surprisingly simply says “He made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16)

Am I right? There is quiet confidence in my soul that God is “definitely right”.  My pursuit of life at seventy-eight years is perspective.  All the mistakes, the regrets and the sins bring me to huge gratitude, because I am growing to know Jesus more every day:  He loves me.

WHAT IF?

What if our Country goes downhill because it is following a dark path? What if life looks black ahead?

It does not matter what happens to us or to the world, when we are doing our personal best to walk with God. Just before Jesus ascended to Heaven, after his resurrection he assured us, "And behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the world. Amen." (Matthew 28:20)

We can focus if we are reading Scripture every day to live by faith in God: once, twice, three times a day as Daniel did. His enemies knew it.  When he ended in the lion’s den, God was there.  In the morning he said loud and clear to the distraught King Darius, “My God has sent his Angel”. (Daniel 6)

God said about three men in history who lived through dark times, “Though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own soul by their righteousness...” (Ezekiel 14:14) Dark days are the same as sunny days to our Creator.  “Yea, the darkness does not hide from You; but the night shines as the day; as is the darkness, so is the light to you.”  (Psalm 139:12)

The queen was after Elijah the Prophet. Jezebel threatened to kill him.  Her fury knew no bounds. "And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers. And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat.  And he looked and behold, there was a cake baked on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink and laid him down again. And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat because the journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God. 

And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What are you doing here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." (I Kings 19) Did the queen get him? You know the story, “Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.” (2 Kings 2:11)

 

How do we have faith to believe, to hold onto Jesus?  It doesn’t matter who threatens, who slanders, who lies.  “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.”

 

What if the darkness in the world deepens! If you are walking with God with integrity, with all your heart, it does not matter?