I can tell you right here and now that this aging business isn’t for the squeamish, because today another complaint popped up on my body’s list of aches and pains. Nossir, it takes guts to stand up to these giants that try and undermine our health as we age. When I proclaimed time and again, “I’m old”, I certainly never meant it to be the curse of dead man walking; I was proudly declaring my older age as a badge I had earned.
I get it that death to the natural body is inevitable, for from dust we came and to dust we return. (Which certainly explains the dry, flaky skin!) Concerning the resurrection of the dead, Paul says, The body that is sown is perishable . . . it is sown in dishonor . . . it is sown in weakness.. . . [i] He even goes so far as to refer to our bodies as the body of our humiliation.[ii] (Signposts of wear and tear are becoming bolder!) It’s enough to take the fight right out of a person . . . if we let it.
Just how much of this chipping away at our physical soundness and vitality does God expect us to yield to? A person can carry just so much health baggage before their knees buckle. Do we want to live out our days with the same mindset as Jacob in Genesis when he said to Pharoah, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are 130 years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been”?[iii] Did the strain of a lifetime of hardship, and loss, and a relentless famine in the land finally take their toll not only on his physical health but on his steadfast spirit?
Or do we contend for the same attitude as spunky old Caleb, who after having survived forty years of wandering in the wilderness, scouted out enemy territories, and defeated giants, declared at age eighty-five, as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in. Now therefore give me this mountain of which the LORD spoke that day.[iv]
And what about the Apostle Paul, who some say died around age sixty? I’d wager to say he felt every bit of his age when he said, I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.[v] The dear man had been flogged, and stoned, and imprisoned, and shipwrecked, and had suffered countless other such brutalities associated with always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.[vi] But did that stop him?[vii]
This aging business calls for war! The old gray mare, she (maybe) ain’t what she used to be many long years ago, but we aging ones have history together with God.[viii] We’ve learned through patience to stay hitched to His plow. Youth may grow tired and weary, but those who wait upon the Lord renew their strength.[ix] We can still, with all our aches and pains, pull our spiritual weight. We can still pack a wallop in our kick against any physical yoke the enemy tries to place on us!
Dunamis power to the gray headed in 2024![x] Dunamis power to the youth who will someday understand what I am saying!
Happy New Year to you all! Blessings.
[i] 1 Corinthians 15:42
[ii] Philippians 3:21
[iii] Genesis 47:7–9
[iv] Joshua 14:10–12
[v] Galatians 6:17
[vi] 2 Corinthians 11:23–28; 2 Corinthians 4:10
[vii] 1 Corinthians 15:10
[viii] The Old Gray Mare – traditional folk song
[ix] Isaiah 40:31
[x] Colossians 1:11; Ephesians 1:19; Psalm 63