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.