Aging & Christ: “Even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you, I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.” Isaiah 46:4. For many of us, aging is no longer just a passing thought that we can just set aside for the time being, but a truth that becomes clearer with every passing day. It’s a blessed consideration in the light of the gospel, but in any other light, almost inconceivable to attempt to navigate! We wake to find ourselves older, weaker, more aware that this life, however precious, is brief. “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” James 4:14. A truth that becomes clearer as the years go by. The mirror shows it, the calendar confirms it, and the aches of our bodies remind us that time marches on. II Corinthians 4:16. Scripture speaks plainly, “man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.” Job 14:1-2. What a sobering testimony of our fleeting existence, and striking reminder of our dust-like state before Almighty God. Genesis 18:27. We have no power to add a single day to our lives, and no strength to hold back the hand of time. Matthew 6:27. And yet, as the days pass and our strength wanes, we are reminded of how utterly dependent we really are. Aging has a way of humbling us, as it tends to strip away illusions of self-sufficiency, reminding us that our strength was never our own to begin with, pointing us beyond what is passing to Christ, the unchanging ONE, who upholds our life from the first breath to the last. “My times are in thy hand.” Psalm 31:15.
And if I’m honest, my greatest fear at the hour of death, or in the long or short seasons leading up to it, {though I’m sure I can come up with about a dozen more, being so fretful and unbelieving at times,} is not pain as such, nor even dying itself, but perhaps losing my mind and forgetting the gospel truths that have been my lifeline. Thoughts of Christ delight my soul, and keep me alive, as it were. I think, what is life apart from Christ? What is strength, or memory, or health, if the LORD seems absent? “Because thy lovingkindness is better than life.” Psalm 63:3.
Here’s also where my struggle deepens. I love this world; I love my family, my work, my ‘brethren’ in Christ, etc., and just the “ordinary” affairs of daily life. I can whittle away hours just soaking in the world around me, observing people, watching birds, strolling through a garden, watching the sun set, or simply sitting quietly with a cup of coffee, etc., I love it all, and I constantly stand amazed at the artistry of God’s hand in creation. To me everything is “the grace of life,” I Peter 3:7, and I’m so thankful for it all! “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” I Thessalonians 5:18. And perhaps because of this, I have never been one to look at life and call it “all a mess,” though I realize, more with each passing day, that here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. Hebrews 13:14. Along those thoughts, I have often been bewildered, and unchristianized in my own mind, as I listened to brethren, some much younger than myself, longing to go home and be with Christ, and speak of the world as some dark and detestable place! That’s not me! I’m not ready to go anywhere! Yet I know this also, the Lord has His own way of instructing us.
Another thing that I’m constantly learning is the fact that the Lord often doesn’t give ‘grace’ until it is needed, and though now we may look upon, whatever it is, as almost unbearable, when the Lord’s appointed time comes, we may find it made sweet in Christ; strength is not given until we are brought into weakness, or in other words, those things that we fear that the Lord may bring upon us as we are growing older and more feeble, (whether they transpire, or others take their place,) may just be the very things that drive us closer to Christ. And the grace we imagine we will lack, He withholds until the moment it is required, but when it comes, the bitter is turned to sweet in Christ. “And he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” II Corinthians 12:9.
Perhaps the older we grow, the more we see that ‘our’ story is not about how well we have kept ourselves, but how faithfully the LORD has kept us. Genesis 24:1. Looking back, the pages are full of our sin, weakness, wandering, and unbelief, but woven through them all is the unbroken thread of Christ’s sufficiency. Romans 5:20-21. How fragile we are, but also how faithful Christ is. “My flesh and my heart faileth,” Psalms 73:26, and indeed it does, and we’re not called to pretend otherwise. We know that we cannot sustain ourselves, “the journey is too great” for us, I Kings 19:7, but Christ giveth “power to the faint,” Isaiah 40:29, “for he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” Psalm 103:14. MPJ
Additional Thought: Thanks. We all struggle, maybe not in exactly the same ways, but there is a common thread that ties every believer together in Christ. That thread is His mercy, mercy that finds us in our frailty and never lets us slip away. “It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23. I think perhaps the older we grow, the more precious it is to be kept, as in one sense, when our “hands” can no longer hold tight to all that which once defined us, they are freed to cling more tenaciously, by His grace, to Christ alone. Have a wonderful day, Marc