You, God, and Aging – Part One
God speaks through the prophet Isaiah about aging Israel in Isaiah 46. His address was directly applicable to the people of Israel as they aged. It is relevant to believers in every era regarding aging personally.
In a TV commercial Kathy Lee Gifford speaks of aging: “I’m not saying growing old is easy. I am saying it can be easier.” God never hinted life would be easy. He, too, has said it can be easier.
Through Isaiah God speaks, “I will be your God throughout your lifetime – until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you: (Isaiah 46: 4).
This promise to aged Israel is applicable to every aged believer. God has graciously engaged to support and comfort His faithful servants, even in their old age. Expanded application is as though God is saying, “Even to your old age, when you grow unfit for business, when you are compassed with infirmities, and perhaps your relations begin to grow weary of you, yet I am he-he that I am, he that I have been – the very same by whom you have been borne from the belly and carried from the womb. You change, but I am the same.”
From the womb to the tomb He is God and as such is worth our devotion.
Graphic, isn’t it? Also gratifying isn’t it?
My wife and I have passed through the nonagenarian portal and not without continuing problems and pain like people of such age. We need a passageway through our perplexities and we are finding God, true to His word, is providing it. There is no exemption from difficulty and no immunity from ailing as we age. Every aging individual knows what I speak.
Every person knows they will get old, but some people live as though an exception will be made in their case. There are no exceptions. It helps if you eat right, exercise properly, rest well and avoid certain aging properties. That is our part. Do them and you will find God does His part. Even if you fail to do your part He still does His, but with the limits you put on yourself.
Actress Sophia Loren noted, “There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.” Truly those are assets when the Lord is added to the equation. Even as those attributes fade as a vapor there stands the Lord with a smile on His face saying, “I am here and I love you.”
We should so live that it might be said of us as it was Abraham: “Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people” (Genesis 25: 8).