Tuesday: They Shall Bring Forth Fruit in Old Age
WEEK 47
TUESDAY
THEY SHALL BRING FORTH FRUIT IN OLD AGE
Acts 2:16-18
We come now to see others who have mastered old age when there was a central purpose in life. If the central purpose of one’s life is sharing Christ, then there is no reason that purpose cannot be intact and fruitful up to the very end.
One of the most useful men I ever knew, head of a council of churches, was led to Christ by an old African American who put his feet upon the Way. After five sermons by Alexander Whyte, delivered expressly to lead a doctor to Christ, had failed, an old woman led that doctor to Christ. I mentioned the old tattooed grandmother who led a thousand to Christ among the head-hunters of Formosa. When I asked an old man of eighty in Japan what his occupation was, he replied, “Winning people to Christ.” He and an old lady went out together to call on people and win them. Another man, head of a meat market, instead of retiring, cut down the hours he gave his business to four, and gave four hours a day to Christ and the church. He won an average of two hundred people to Christ each year for four years. Before he began this work, he had a bad heart; but afterward he forgot all about his heart, and it settled down to normalcy. He had been giving it “attention pains.” He didn’t know how to speak in public, but he could sit down with people and lead them to Christ.
A woman belonged to a family in which, for forty-nine generations, one member spent life in a wheelchair. She was the one to do that in this generation. But she got hold of Abundant Living and saw the possibility of breaking this trail of invalidism. Since then she has helped eight thousand mentally challenged children in her very famous schools. She feels the old invalidism pulling her back as it takes her two hours to get up in the morning and get going! But the point is that she gets going, and how! She decided she would destroy the vicious idea that one member of each generation had to spend life in a wheelchair. She saw children in need and walked out of a wheelchair to serve them, and is radiantly happy. You can walk out of the confines of old age into usefulness if you begin to “see visions.”
O Creative Spirit, create in me the divine impulse and power to create. Long after my body is under the law of decay, my spirit can be under the law of creation. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall beat out the invading physical wrinkles by the inward ardency of my youthful spirit.