It’s All Uphill from Here
“The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away… So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” ~Psalm 90:10, 12
Someone once said, “It’s not getting old that’s difficult; it’s aging.” Amen. I don’t know about you, but some days I feel like I just finished forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and I’m pretty sure I was wearing a heavy pack! As we age, our bodies stop doing things we expect them to do, and sometimes they do things we never expected they would do. Even the youngest among us know that things change as we age. For a time, they seem to be getting better: you feel stronger at twenty-five than you did at fifteen; you are (hopefully) smarter now than you were as a child. But in the end, strength leaves us; troubles, aches, and pains add up; and then we fly away…
It’s a shame that far too often we think of the realities of aging in pessimistic terms. "It’s all downhill from here." "Life gets harder as you get older." We even use terms like “middle-aged” to imply that we’re half-way to dead! But the Bible portrays aging as something quite different, doesn’t it? Rather than lamenting the reality of lost faculties, it celebrates the increase of godly wisdom. So let me ask you: are you numbering your days that you might get a heart of wisdom?
What does wisdom say when the signs of aging present themselves? Wisdom thanks God for the experience of a life lived by faith. You see, age provides us with something that youthful vigor and energy cannot: a long history of God’s faithfulness toward us. The landscape of a life of seventy or eighty years is littered with memorials to God’s covenant-keeping goodness. The aged among us can point to untold Ebenezers which dot the horizon of their lives. Oh, to be aged and have so much knowledge and experience of God’s Fatherly care! “Surely,” says the old man, “goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life.” “You have been my dwelling place, O Lord,” says the elderly lady in her twilight years.
Perhaps you are struggling with the effects of aging today. Let me offer a way to pray in light of God’s providence in your aging. I hope for all of us this serves as encouragement, either today or sometime in the future:
Lord, let my declining years and aging body expose to me all the ways I’ve been sinfully self-reliant. Let these fleeting days show me that You have been good to me for far longer than I’ve been faithful to You. Help me to remember Your abundant mercy and grace. As I struggle with faculties lost and the sunset approaching, help me recall all the days I’ve known Your love. Teach me to number my days, and give me wisdom that I might impart it to others before I fly away. Then take me home in peace.
In reality, it’s all uphill from here, isn’t it?
Rev. Kyle Lockhart, Associate Pastor