We are reluctant to grow old. Certainly our culture has a youth fixation. I was noticing that my hair is getting a bit thinner (though I am glad to have some hair!) and I started to wish I had my thick head of hair from when I was young. But then I remembered that with that thick head of hair there was also a thick head of ignorance that went with being young. What is it about our fear of aging? I think I know...it's because signs of aging are also signposts that tell us the end is approaching. What a news flash...we're not going to live forever, here. Of course, why would you want to go on living here when all your friends are gone and your kids are old? I already feel like life is passing me by...somewhere back when computers went from 286 processors to 386 chips and when telephones went from cordless to "too small to see", somewhere after Motown and before Rap, somewhere after contact lenses and before laser eye surgery, somewhere after ABC, NBC, CBS and before the Cooking Channel...I seem to have gotten off the train or life has started passing me by (in a hybrid car). Have you caught yourself turning to your spouse after a commercial aired on TV to ask "What was that all about?" So I say, why cling senselessly to youth. Instead, let's cling tenaciously to life, real life. We can embrace aging because it is as much a part of life as growing up. It's all part of God's plan. After all, this planet was designed to host many generations under the sun and we have to make room on the stage for the next show. Instead of trying to stay "cool" with all that's happening in popular culture and instead of trying to look 10 years younger let's rejoice that the Rock of Ages holds us and the excitement of knowing the King of Eternity is just beginning here...like some kind of movie preview we have tasted of His love and forgiveness. We have known healing and deliverance from discouragement. We have been set free from addictions and imprisoning habits. We have met the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and found that He knows us and accepts us....and, beyond that, He awaits us to spend eternity in His presence.
We may be bypassed by popular culture but we'll never be forgotten or devalued by our loving Creator, who waits for us beyond time.
1 John 2:15-17 (The Message Version) "Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity."
blessings,
Rob Smith
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