Even to your old age I am he,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save. Isaiah 46: 4
Have you ever had a flashback of something said a long time ago and had a bit of a chuckle remembering the incident. The recollection happened to me last evening. A group of us sat around chatting along with our review of our book for our book club. As I listened to the chatter, I heard the tail end of someone else’s story. She said, “I was the oldest in the room.” She is more than half my age, but I laughed, because nowadays I am almost always the oldest in any room.
Her words took me back more than forty years when I attended a co-worker’s baby shower. With the room filled with young women I’d not met, the hostess introduced me as “the oldest in the room.” Then she threw her hand over her mouth and apologized. I loved being so identified. In family gatherings I had always been the youngest and, I assumed, the least important. From then on, I have always enjoyed the status of being the oldest in the room.
Being the oldest is not a guarantee of wisdom, authority, or productivity. I suppose God has allowed me to live this long so He can make me more like Jesus—obviously a long process. As well, He wants me to demonstrate to my little world just a little bit of what heaven is like. I rest on His promises for Him to carry me, bear my burdens, and save me.
So how do we “eld?” How do we grow old with grace and style, producing in a manner to establish a sense of heaven on earth. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, according to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, answer 103:
In the third petition, which is, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” we pray, that God, by his grace, would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to his will in all things, as the angels do in heaven.
In so doing, we bring heaven to earth. When we become Christians, the road to heaven isn’t an immediate homegoing. God leaves us here like ambassadors on foreign soil. Some of us just have to hang out here longer than others. Jesus tells us in Luke 19: 13: Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas, and said to them, “Engage in business until I come.” His business. His minas. Whether he gives us long years or short days, we are to engage the abilities, assets, and disposition he has created in us to bring our fellow humans to meet Him. As the world about us falls apart, we need to keep aware of the traumas and tragedies, the news, the workings of government, and the needs of everything from our neighbors to the nations. But, we grow old in peace and can be confident He will carry us, bear us up, and save us in the end. We need to trust Him, walk in step with Him, and in the same direction. All the time.
I like when I am the oldest in the room. I’m given the incentive to bring out my inner child. My inner child had to join my younger neighbor to build a snowman in the front yard.
