Do people ever ask you your age? Do you often wonder the age of other people? So how good are you in estimating a person’s age? To be honest with you after a life time of trying to work out the age of the fairer sex I am quite hopeless – my average score would be only 2 out of ten! However, I can take consolation in the fact that many people seem to think that I am several years younger than I actually am. How long this will last I don’t know but I rather glad that they make this miscalculation.
At the end of this week I will receive the annual reminder that I am one year older. So my blog is about old age which sadly comes to all of us even if with use a top brand of moisturiser! Old age is the season when we can give ourselves to “soul-making” as the Quakers say. We can concentrate on getting to know God better and cultivating those character traits that make us more like Him. Age breaks down our strength and energy and strips us of our busyness. It’s God’s way of getting us to slow down so we’ll take more time for Him. We can think more deeply about life, about ourselves, and about others.
Spiritual growth is a gradual and continual process and one which we must cultivate. That means we must give ourselves time, and time is something we older folks usually have plenty of but since I retired I seem to be working harder than ever!
Though older people are sometimes uneasy about change, change is an inevitable part of life. We’re being shaped every minute we live. Every thought, every decision, every action, every emotion, every response is shaping us into one kind of person or the other. Either we’re moving toward likeness to Christ or away from Him into some sort of caricature of the person God intended us to be. We’re either becoming more redemptive or more destructive to ourselves and to others. A man can’t be static; he has to change – one way or the other.
It’s true, we lose some things as we age: physical strength, quickness, agility and other factors, but think of the calm God gives us, the peace He leaves us, “the hoarded spoils, and the legacies of time.”
Old age is the best time to grow in grace and grandeur, in inner strength and beauty of character. “Grey hair,” the wise man said “is a crown of splendour (a beauty) attained by a righteous life” (Proverbs 16:31).
John.
