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Sunday, March 18, 2007

From The Back Pew IX

How to Know You're Getting Older
Everything hurts! and what doesn't hurt, doesn't work!
You feel like the night before, and you haven't been anywhere!
You sit in a rocking chair and you can't get it going!
Your knees buckle and your belt won't!
Dialing long distance wears you out!
Your fortune teller offers to read your face!
The little gray haired lady you help across the street is your wife!
You sink your teeth into a steak, and they stay there!
You wake up in the morning and your water bed has sprung a leak,
then, you realize you don't have a water bed!
When you watch a pretty girl go by, your pace-maker makes the garage door go up!
When you know all the answers, but no one asks you the questions!
When you decide to procrastinate, but never get around to it!

Old age is dreaded by almost everyone because it usually means loneliness, physical decline, and a retreat to inactivity. Some people tend to lose their enthusiasm for life and spend too much time in fruitless reminiscing and self-pity. They feel like "Old Jimmy", an elderly gentleman George Mueller often told about. When this man was asked what he did all day since he had retired, he replied, "I just sit and think, and sit and think,...and sometimes I just sit!" That's getting old in the worst way -- ceasing to live before we die.

History records that many people made some of their greatest contributions to society after the age of 65. The Earl of Halsburg, for example, was 90 when he began preparing a 20- volume revision of English law. Goethe wrote Faust at 82. Galileo made his greatest discovery when he was 73. At 69, Hudson Taylor was still vigorously working on the mission field, opening up new territories in Indochina. And when Caleb was 85, he took the stronghold of the giants (Josh. 14:10-15).

God never intends for us to retire from spiritual activity. The Bible says we can "still bring forth fruit in old age." Even as Jesus kept the "best wine" for the last at the wedding in Cana (John 2:10), so He seeks to gather the most luscious clusters of the fruit of the Spirit from the fully ripened harvest of our lives. You may be sure God wouldn't keep you on this earth if He didn't have a worthwhile ministry for you to accomplish. So keep on serving the Lord!

2 comments:

Becky Wolfe said...

I've got big plans for when I get old. All the things that would be rediculous for me to do while I'm young. (ie where big hats, lots of bright lipstick & tacky brooches) Its going to be a blast!

I don't worry so much about what I won't be able to do in old age cuz it only means I'm that much closer to all the things I'll be doing again on the New Earth in my resurrected body! Old age may be the time of rest I need before I start mountain climbing again in that body!

The sometimes Irreverant Ed Brouwer said...

Good attitude except for the tacky brooches, lots of bright lipstick and the big hats I agree with you.

I often wonder how old I would be if I didn't know how old I was.

Thanks for the comments