That God would be glorified!

By: American Decency Staff

I took a family vacation last week.  It was a very active time of driving go karts, swimming, more go kart driving and more swimming, and time walking the streets of Gatlinburg, TN, and, fellowshipping around the dinner table.

You know you’re getting older when:

(1)  As you get out of the car you are stiff from your feet to your knees, to your hip and throughout (and it takes a good ten minutes to get loosened up). 

(2) You know you’re getting older when you see people just a few years younger getting to the front door of the rest stop area in a third of the time that it takes you. 

(3) You know you’re getting older when a loved one says “You’re showing more your age these days.” 

I could easily expand the list.  However, I must also say, too, that there are immense positives to getting older.  Here are just a few. 

(1) You have what seems an increasingly high view of the preciousness of life: both young and old.

(2) You have an increasing gratitude for health, vitality and well-being which the young take so much for granted.  This comes with seeing things change on a dime.  All was well and then a tragedy strikes turning happiness into great sorrow.

(3) You have an expanding concern for children and grandchildren and other people’s children.  You see more clearly than ever before that decisions have serious implications either for the good or the bad. 

(4) You have more resources to draw from regarding the changing trends and/or tide of the culture.  You can look back and see how rapidly we are in decline as a culture which gives you greater concern for the potential (likely?) downfall of our culture if immense spiritual change doesn’t occur very, very soon.

(5) Things that once were so important become less so (sports, accumulating things, entertainment for entertainment sake). 

(6) Love for God and personal relationship with Him grow, I believe, in the heart of those who truly know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. 

(7) Your burden for God and country grows deeper than ever before as decisions that are made at the highest levels have such serious implications far more for those much younger that are likely going to have to face many things that the aging will not have to face: Lawlessness at the highest levels, a diminishment of the authority of the Bible and to the U.S. Constitution, the assault upon Biblical marriage,  our open border policy that will permit millions of illegal immigrants to come into our country which will include terrorists, etc.

(8) An ever increasing love and appreciation for your life-mate. 

This list could be so easily expanded.  Getting older clearly can have its advantages.  I say CAN not always does.   

I remember my Dad just a few short years ago (he passed in 2008) as dementia was setting in and he was more and more confined to a wheel chair.  He would often say:  “Bill, I have no squawks.  I’ve had a wonderful, wonderful life.”

In saying all of this, I visited with Charley (80 years old) who has done 12 mission trips including two this past year.  He is already planning his next one.  Tears come into his eyes as he talks about a mother tearfully thanking him for the house he helped to build in some remote village in South America.

I think of Diet Eman (a name familiar to you all) who served in the Dutch resistance during World War II saving many Jewish families from concentration camps.  At 94 years old, Diet just did a short-term mission in Guatemala.  An auto accident occurred that brought temporary hospitalization.  Her life has been that God would be glorified until God calls her home. Diet has taken risks all her life.

I say all of this to say this:  No matter our age or stage.  Life is worth the living.  May those of us who have life and breath and who are blessed to have Christ in our hearts find ways to feed those around us with the life giving bread of life found ultimately only in Jesus Christ: “The way, the truth and the life!”

The need is great.  I am convinced the hour is late. 

May God keep that purpose stirring in our hearts – That God would be glorified!

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