Musings On Growing Old
GROWING OLD IS WHAT IT IS
It is true. What Proust said. People I knew in my youth are still youth in the image I have of them in my mind. But somewhere out there, in the world of reality, each of those young people have, like me, grown old.Getting old, they say, is inevitable. Unless, of course, you die young. The Lord in His goodness to me did not have me die young. I can never now die young. That is one of the good things about being old.
"Where did the years go?" we are prone to ask, especially as we have fewer years to go wherever they go. I don't know where years go after December 31. I suppose they just fade into memory.
It was Seneca, the Greek poet, who said, "Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember." That is true, also. In fact, that truth became obvious to me as I worked on my series This Little Life of Mine. Events that were challenging and difficult when I went through them in my younger years became sweet as I wrote them down for posterity.That is especially true for those of us who know Jesus Christ as Savior. The sweetness comes from the fact that we can look back and see how God led us step by step. The presence of Jesus alongside us may not have always been so obvious when we were in the difficult times. But looking back we can trace His love and power through the difficulty and realize anew that He never left our side.
They say old age is not for sissies. "They," whoever they are, I suppose, are reflecting on the increasing of infirmities that come with the advancing years. Some things don't work, and what does work hurts! And medical care for the aged is certainly scary to say the least. And that is just talking about the costs. Procedures, medications, and surgeries become far more common in old age.Medical people are fond of telling us that, for instance, one in nine women will suffer from breast cancer during their life time. True. But the greatest percentage of those instances occur in old age, not in the young. The chances of suffering from any disease increase greatly with age.
Ernst Wynder, a writer quoted in the New York Times said, "It should be the function of medicine to help people die young as late in life as possible." That would seem to be the theory behind the plethora of medications prescribed today to slow down the aging process. Or is the motivation profit?
Photos: Top left column: Tom at one-year-old (with his aunt). Middle left column: Tom at age 7 (with his mother). Bottom left column: Tom at 17 (high school graduation picture). Top right column: Tom in his twenties. Middle right column: Tom and Linda current portrait. Bottom right column: Tom today (with grandaughter Evelyn).
The truth is, we start dying the moment of conception. Everything that is alive, from human to animal to plant, from beginning to end, everything that is alive is dying. It is just a matter of time. For some time seems to move faster; for others slower. But all come to the same end."It is appointed unto man once to die," the Bible says. That is the grace of God. Dying once is plenty. Who needs the religions that teach reincarnation! Imagine facing death over and over again. We only have to face it once, praise God.
So, life ticks on, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year. And life by life. And we just go along for the ride.
Now all of this would be quite depressing, indeed, it is quite depressing for many. But not for those of us who are in a faith relationship with Jesus Christ. We are not looking ahead to the death of ourselves. We are looking ahead to life everlasting with Christ.
This does make a difference. A tremendous difference. If all I have to look forward to at my age is increasing loss of body strength and function, then death, then nothingness, as many today are proclaiming is my future, then what do I have to live for? Why should I even try to stay alive? If all I have is decline and death, then I might as well just end it all when my body gets to the point where I can't bear to live in it any more.I praise God I'm not to that point yet. I understand it could happen, and is very likely to happen at some point. But I praise God I have made it this far in life in a body that still functions reasonably well. But when it does fail, when the inevitable failure of the flesh strikes my body, I can be confident that real life for me is not ending. It is just beginning.
"Being absent from the body is being present with the Lord," the Apostle Paul declares in defiance of atheism, agnosticism, science and human speculation. When my body dies someday, me, the real person who has lived on this earth lo these many years, the real me will be present with the Lord Jesus Christ. Where He is, I will be.So, let the years fly to wherever they fly. Let the body decline. Let wrinkles, gray hair or no hair, and the loss of teeth, sight, hearing and walking without aid all come as they may. What of it! They are all but small aberations in the eternal time line. For I know by faith the conqueror of time, of sin, of death itself. He is my friend. He is my Lord. He is my Savior. And when all of this earthly stuff is past, I will be with Him. Forever.
Truth is, someone who is going to live forever can never grow old.
