Here are a few of my reflections on this doorstep to year #55:
- When I was younger I never really expected to live to be 54. I have. Youth tends to be extraordinarily short-sighted. Older middle age has helped me to see a little more clearly and to have the corrective lenses of Scripture to realize that how long I live is not the real issue, but rather HOW WELL I live. Each additional year causes me to think more and more about what I will hear Christ say when I stand before His judgment seat someday. I want to hear His "Well done."
- Each additional year also causes me to say, "What is MOST important at this point in my life?" I have lived life to this point largely bouncing from one activity to the next, not really evaluating the enduring value of each activity but more the present pleasure of it. I have always zeroed in on the easy, the interesting, the creative activity. Now I am realizing that a life well-lived is about faithfulness to the most important things from God's vantage point: family, the church, my own soul's intimacy with Christ, the eternally lost, and the glory of God. I am seeking to look at my schedule more through such values these days.
- At this point in life, my mom is dead and my wife's dad is dead. My dad is in a state of much more frail health and my wife's mom is totally incapacitated physically. To see the decline of those you love, to see the inevitable effects of aging, causes me to think about the time when I will be "old." Never used to think about that before! Will my children need to make hard decisions about where I will live when I can't get around easily or when I am incontinent? Will I have the symptoms of dementia or full-fledged alzheimers in my later years? If so, will I become cranky and mean and aggressive? I sure don't want to end up as a heap of aging humanity in a wheel chair in the corner of an expensive care facility someday. But I might. If so, will I trust God? Will my personality honor God or will it cause folks to make excuses for my profane language and disagreeable nature? It makes me want to learn MORE and MORE and MORE to walk in the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit, to know contentment in whatever condition I am in and to genuinely love others. If I grow in this, isn't there a good chance that my aging years will be more mellow and God-glorifying? God knows, but I want to take the high road into my later years.
- To this point I have lived 19,710 days. My heart has beat nearly 2 BILLION times! What do I have to show for the length of days of my life? To this point I would say MEDIOCRITY has been the rule of the day. I have known very little of striving for excellence. I have been motivated more by ease and comfort and others than I have by Christ. Someone has defined mediocrity as "the best of the worst and the worst of the best." That would be me. But in this I hope, I am still alive, Christ is STILL working in me, and I am doing some of my most diligent work and cross-motivated living ever! 54 or not, God is still at work in me. He has not rejected my mediocre self. He is committed to make me like His Son (Romans 8:29) and He will NOT do a mediocre job at that conforming work.
- I am committed to be more of a man of prayer than ever before in my life. I have been learning that God does His work on this earth through prayer. As long as I can at least think relatively clear, I can pray. I can lose my ability to see, hear, walk, talk, feed myself, etc. but I can still pray. I may not be able to preach when I am 75 or 80, but I do hope I'll be able to pray. If I can pray, my life will NOT be wasted nor fruitless. If I can pray I can affect the growth of the Kingdom of God on earth. I can do evangelism if I can still pray. I can lay up treasures in heaven if I can pray. I can have a gigantic impact on my local church if I can pray. I can glorify God if I can pray. Prayer is the great ministry of the elderly who grow old in the Lord. "Oh, Lord, teach me to pray!"
- As I look at so many of the elderly that I have known and do know I fear. I fear becoming like them when I am old. I fear living out my last days consumed by talk and worry about medical problems and doctors and treatments and bills. I fear a life that has become fruitless and boring and lonely. I want to grow old like the righteous spoken of in Psalm 92: "The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They STILL BEAR FRUIT IN OLD AGE, they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him." vv.12-15. The best way to make sure that I do not grow old with little to no living trust in Christ is to trust him today. My pursuit of Him TODAY is my best insurance against a future where He is a distant memory. It is His mercy that will keep me close, but I am charged to seek Him.
"So teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:12
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