Sunday: The Mastery of Old Age
WEEK 47
SUNDAY
THE MASTERY OF OLD AGE
Psalm 92:12-15
We come now to consider the mastery of old age, a very needed mastery, for civilization in the West is fast becoming a civilization of old people. With the average length of life at sixty-five years for men and seventy for women,* the mastery of old age is a pressing necessity. It is also imperative if life is not to end for a majority of humanity frayed and frustrated at the end, instead of finished and fruitful.
For many, old age is a burden instead of a blessing. I am writing this in Florida, where the aging and the aged gather to spend their last days. These represent the economically well off for the most part, those who are able to pick up the home environment and put their roots in the sandy soil of Florida. And the soil is sandy, in many ways. For people who have come here to build castles in the air on the foundation of fact have found disillusionment and frustration, except for a certain group. Those who have a sufficiently vital faith and experience of God can—for the most part—stand the shock of transplantation and retirement. I say “for the most part,” for many of these have difficulty in being compelled to do nothing significant. They keep busy trying to be busy. And they try to impress that fact upon you. But you can see it is a battle, a battle with trivial nothingness and just living on till the end. There is no mastery of old age except in rare cases. Even people whose lives have been spent in the religious limelight find it difficult to adjust to the shadows. Perhaps they have lived by limelight instead of by the Light.
But when I turn to the New Testament, I find there is no battling with oncoming age. Paul serenely awaited the coming of the end, busy with significant things and fruitful, especially fruitful, up to the last. What was his secret? And what was the secret of this whole society that could mention old age only twice, and both of these constructive and positive? They weren’t whining about old age; they were winning through old age.
O Christ, you are the same from age to age, ageless; make me the same. For in my body I belong to a decaying world, but my spirit is ageless in you. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My roots are not in the time process but in the eternal process, so I live in eternity—now.
*As of 2015, these figures increased to approximately seventy-six for men and eighty-one for women. See https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus15.pdf#015, accessed March 21, 2017.