Commentary on Growing Old (Aging)

Why do we grow old and die? Is it really a curse, as most people seem to think? Maybe not...

Childhood

        Every child wants to get older so they can ride a two-wheeler or stay up later or walk home from school by themselves. Every one of us has said, "When I grow up I want to..." But then we do grow up.

        Relevant Scriptures:

• Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.  Proverbs 22:6.

Career and Marriage

We leave high school and go to college or get a job, and discover that responsibilities are starting to press in from every side. We get married and maybe have children---the responsibilities increase a hundredfold. As our children grow, we do everything we can to help them in school, in sports, physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.

        Relevant Scriptures:

• He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.  Proverbs 18:22.
• Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him.  Psalm 127:3.

Middle Age

        Suddenly, we discover that our children are grown and married. We may even be grandparents. Our responsibilities may decrease but now we get to enjoy our grandchildren in a way we never had time to enjoy our children. Now we can read them that "one more chapter, please"! But behind this looms our own mortality. The end may be in view on the most distant horizon and we have to take it into account.

        Relevant Scriptures:

• Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.  Titus 2:2.
• Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father.  1 Timothy 5:1.

Growing Old

        This page isn't really about growing up and maturing. These seem to be natural things and we can easily take them in stride. This page is about "aging", that is, growing OLD! Again, remember that it is only the body that grows old. Lucy Spencer said that however old we get on the outside, we never age inside. I think that, in spirit, we are all about 30! God has truly "set eternity in our hearts [our inner being]".

        Relevant Scriptures:

• We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  2 Corinthian 4:16-18.
• Remember your Creator...before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim...  Ecclesiastes 12:1-3.
• By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.  Genesis 3:19.

What happens when we grow old?

        Some things make good fodder for jokes:

• We gain weight
• We need glasses and hearing aids and false teeth
• We start to forget things (or forget to start things)
• We at last get to retire
• We can't keep up with our sons on backpacking trips any more.
• Our daughters can now outlast us on any shopping trip.
• We crouch for a book or a dish on the bottom shelf and our knees will hardly bring us back up again.
• Etc., etc., etc.

What is our mental approach to growing old?

        We may try to push it right out of our mind by thinking or reading or watching movies about the exploits o youth in romance, or adventure, or war. To quote Dorothy Sayers, The Whimsical Christian, "from the relentless reality of age, they seek to escape into a fantasy of youth---their own or other people's." We may submit to or resist or resent growing older. We may courageously "foresee the event and endure it." "Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward, we must believe in age."

        Relevant Scriptures:

• I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.  Psalm 37:25
• Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am he, I am he who will sustain you.  Isaiah 46:4
• Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.  Proverbs 16:31.
• The length of our days is seventy years---or eighty, if we have the strength, yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.  Psalm 90:10
• The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.  Ecclesiastes 12:14.

Can God sympathize with our problems of age?

        To bring this whole discussion into God's light, I quote again, "...for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is---limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death---he (God) had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game his is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile."

        Although Jesus obviously never experienced old age, he certainly experienced the factors that we fear in old age---"pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death."

        Aging does bring deterioration of most of our five senses---there's no denying it. But for the Christian, it's like a metamorphosis; it's what we go through to get something better. The illustration of the butterfly is apt---The caterpillar crawls around on the ground, eating leaves and grass; then it builds its chrysalis and sleeps. In the spring it breaks out of its old life and soars. We too can soar one day!

        Relevant Scriptures:

• We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet was without sin.  Hebrews 4:15
• The time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me...  2 Timothy 4:6-8.
• Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.  Revelation 22:17.