Old age and aging is widely viewed in a negative light these days. There are endless jokes about getting and being old. Bob Hope, who lived to be a hundred, once said, “I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap.” Jay Leno once joked, “With high definition TV, everything looks bigger and wider. Kind of like going to your 25th high school reunion” Reader’s Digest, 9/04, p 70). The fact is there are currently a greater number of older people in America than ever before. Even so, aging is viewed in our culture as a state of decline. Dr. Lawrence R. Samuel, Ph.D said many see aging as “the downward side of the curve of life.” In an article entitled, Why Do Young People Dislike Older People?” Lawrence notes that “the years following age 50 or perhaps 60 are commonly considered the period between the end of one’s real, active life and death…” (psychologytoday.com, posted Jan.24, 20219). Dr. Lawrence goes on to explain why this dismissive attitude about older people is way off base, calling it a “strange denial of the completely natural process of aging.” Finally, he notes something young people (and old people who disdain getting older!) ought to think about – “everyone will become one [an older person] if he or she lives long enough.” I don’t know how old he is, but kudos to Dr. Lawrence!
How should we view older people in the church? If you think of them as little more than slow-walking, grey-headed, hard-of-hearing citizens, you need to do a check-up from your own neck-up! True – there are some big differences in older and younger people. Just read Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:7 where the Holy Spirit of God calls to young people to get in the habit of living for God before their get-up-and go has gotten-up-and-gone! To quote Bruce Springsteen’s song “Glory Days” – “Glory days, they’ll pass you by in the wink of a young girl’s eye.” Most older people will be the first to tell you that getting older “ain’t” for wimps! But I digress. God speaks specifically about and to older people in the church in Titus 2:1-5 where the apostle Paul wrote these inspired words to Titus – “But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things — that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.” One thing here comes through loud and clear. As surely as young people who are Christians are not “the church of the future” but truly are part of the church right now, so older people are not the church of by-done days! God still has a vital work He calls older men and women to do, a work they are uniquely qualified for – the work of being an older Christian – being a model and teacher for younger people. Older people bring experience to life that can’t be ordered on amazon.com or downloaded as an app. Young and old, think – you can’t escape getting some wrinkles if you keep on living. But as some unknown wit said, “It’s important to have a twinkle in your wrinkle.” The inner person can be renewed day by day even as the outer one perishes (2 Corinthians 4:16)! Because of Jesus Christ, we can keep some twinkle in our wrinkles! Think about it.
By: Dan Gulley, Smithville TN