Growing Older

In one of the devotionals by Leslie F. Brandt which I read this past week the author asked this question: "How do we know we are growing older?" Here are some of the answers he gave: "Our children begin to look middle-aged. Our knees buckle but our belts won't. We have all the answers, but nobody asks us the right questions. That gleam in our eyes is really the sun reflected off our trifocals. Our backs go out more than we do. People are beginning to address us as old timers."

I can think of a lot more and I'm sure you can too. Growing older is a fact of life, in process from the day we are born until the day we die. Perhaps "growing older" is a term used to avoid the "growing old" idea. We all know we are growing older, but no one wants to admit to growing old.

My mother was forty years old when I was born, so to me she always looked sort of old. I used to ask her on her birthdays if she was old yet, and she always said no - until she was eighty. When I asked her if she was old yet on that memorable birthday, she finally said, "Well I guess if you say so." Mom lived to almost 90 - she died in February and would have been 90 in May.

Someone asked me not too long ago how long I wanted to live. I said, well my father lived to be 90 and my brother lived to be 90, so that sounds like a pretty good age to go for. Sometimes I wonder, though, if I really want to live that long. Indications are that my health might not be ideal for the next 12 years. I really would not look forward to dealing with serious health concerns during those years.

The biblical text Brandt used in the devotional mentioned above was from Psalm 126:5 - "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy." I close this post with another quotation from this devotional: "At least one of the reasons for aging is the tears we have sown throughout the years. There have been both good and sad times. There will be more to come. In spite of those arthritic twings, however, we can be happier than we have ever been. Life has been full of dark nights, but we now see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is time to celebrate. We ought to acknowledge our Lord's love and concern, our secure and eternal relationship to him, and allow our bodies and spirits to break forth into happy hilarity and give our nerves and muscles the healthy exercise of laughter."

That is a big order, especially when one is dealing with health concerns on a daily basis. But it is my desire to do that as I continue to be a

Pilgrim on the way

(Quotations are from Bible Readings for The Retired, published by Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, MN.)