How old are you?
Friday 30th May
Satchel Paige, the baseball philosopher is credited with the saying, ”How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was.” There are some fairly young people who would give an age much beyond their actual years and there are some elderly people who would say that they were in their mid-twenties. We recall one delightful lady in her late seventies who was asked by her teen-age grand daughter if old people thought differently than young people and the spry old girl replied, ”No, they don’t, I know, because I have asked them.” Frankly, we still like to think of ourselves as being a Corvette but we must confess that we have a smaller gas tank than we once had. There is a clever poem about growing old that says in part, that ”our get up and go has got up and went.” Certainly our stamina may not be the same in later years as it once was but our thinking does not need to slow down. Age to a large degree is a state of mind and as Satchel Paige infers, we are only as old as we think we are.
Our father-in-law has just celebrated his ninety-ninth birthday and while his body may confess to being in its one hundredth year, his mind is still fresh and sharp. He believes that the return of Christ is just around the corner and he is longing for the time when the deaf shall hear and the lame shall leap like the unharmed deer. If we keep our minds centered upon God and His word as one of our hymns says, ”O let our minds rest wholly on Thy Word,” then we can keep young in our thinking. Jeremiah tells us that the compassions of God fail not because they are new every morning. Our father-in-law does his Bible readings early every morning and as the Psalmist he delights in God’s statutes and he does not forget God’s word. How sad it is to see old people in rest homes who are spiritually bankrupt just waiting to die. Their lives are behind them and they have no future because they have not invested in the only thing of lasting value, the promises of God.
It really does not make much difference how old we are, what is important is what we have done for God in the years He has given us. If the answer is ”nothing” then if we are old it just means that we have wasted that many more years than a younger person. Paul tells us to ”walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time.”
Our time is really all we have to give to God and yet with all the time saving devices at our disposal, most people think that they have no time for God. We really are ”too busy” if we have no time for God. At the judgment seat will Jesus Christ have ”time for us?” His coming really is just around the corner for all of us. Paul tells us, ”But this I say, brethren, the time is short:” and Jesus Christ says to us in the Revelation ”keep those things which are written therein (in our Bibles): for the time is at hand.”
Our father-in-law has lived over 36,000 days. Most of us have lived a great many less than this, but the big question is not how many, but how well we have lived them. Truly this is the day which the LORD hath made;” The big question is, are we rejoicing and being glad this day in the Lord?