Even in old age they will still produce fruit;
they will remain
vital and green. (Psalms
92:14 NLT)
I
am the first of the baby boomers. I was born in 1946 along with George W. Bush
and Bill Clinton. A lot of water has
gone under the bridge since the inception of the baby boomer era. Many of us are starting to notice a little
wear and tear on our mortal bodies. I don’t run down the first base line with
the same rapidity that I once did. As a matter of fact, I don’t run the bases
at all anymore. For believers in Christ,
though our physical bodies are decaying, our spirits are growing stronger and
stronger.
Many in this generation reach this
stage of life and move into a nostalgic malaise. They sit around and think about “the good old
days.” As Christians, yes, we thank God for his faithfulness in the past, but
we use it as a springboard of faith for our involvement the new things God
wants to do. Of course, due to physical limitations, we sometimes have to vary
our type and the extend of our service to the Lord, but this in no way makes us
ready to be put out to pasture. As the
above scriptural reference says about the godly, “Even in old age they will
still produce fruit.” We should never
allow ourselves to become a prisoner of a positive past.
E. Stanley Jones, the famous missionary
statesman to India, at age seventy raised a few eyebrows at a conference when
he proclaimed that the next ten years would be his best. At age eighty the
naysayers had to admit he was right.
After he turned eighty, Jones asked the Lord for more and better years.
The Lord spoke to him that the next era would be one of his greatest
contribution. This too, also happened. What enabled this man to be fruitful his
entire life? It was attitude. A young
girl once asked her Mother, “How old is Stanley Jones?” The Mother answered, “77.” The girl replied, “How can this be? He acts
as if he is just beginning.” Jones once said this toward the end of his life. “Is this period of my life a sunset or a
sunrise? But this that I have doesn’t
have the feel of a sunset at all. It has
the feel of a sunrise. In Jesus there
are no sunsets, they are all sunrises.
He is the bright and Morningstar, not the evening star. He is the Lord of the past, the present, and
the future.”
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
we must always remember that our home is in heaven. Though our bodies are
fading, God’s Spirit is renewing our spirit in anticipation of the day when we
will be with Him. The best days for Christians are always in front of us. Let
us all rejoice every day that in Christ we are forever young.
Ken
Barnes, the author of “The
Chicken Farm and Other Sacred Places” YWAM Publishing
Email:
kenbarnes737@gmail.com
website: https://sites.google.com/site/kenbarnesbooksite/
Good words Ken. Hopefully when I am 80 my best years will still be ahead of me!!
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