Today we are living 20 years longer than our forebears did a century ago. However, many persons have not prepared themselves to fully enjoy life during these years. Instead, they awake each morning without purpose and with a diminished sense of self-worth. They meander through their days with no vision, no mission, no dreams, and no enthusiasm for life. For them life is just one long monotonous “rocking chair” wait for death. HOW SAD.
We may well ask, why does God allow aging to happen? What is its purpose? When did the process of maturing, which we see as being positive, become the thief in the night that we see as aging? And that question leads to, If God allows aging to happen, it must have a purpose. So, what is its purpose?
It has been said, “It is not how old you are but how you are old that makes the difference in your enjoyment or despair of life.” It has also been said, “A beautiful young person is an accident of nature, but a beautiful older person is a work of art.”
Regretfully, in our American culture, attitudes about aging are very negative, resulting in a massive denial of aging. We joke about growing old and stigmatize those who do. We call our older adults “elderly” an identification suggesting diminishment and requiring constant care, rather than calling them “elders” which denotes wisdom and respect.
We idolize the young and desperately cling to the carefree, immature lifestyle of youth. We constantly fight the evidence of aging and deny its reality by spending millions of dollars on cosmetic cover-ups to keep us looking young. We pluck or dye our gray hairs and pay for surgical face-lifts attempting to cover any evidence of the aging process. But it is all in vain.
American culture views aging as a succession of losses, a painful descent into nothingness, and a senseless slippage of strength, abilities, and stature in the community. As evidenced in their attitudes and actions, Americans do not agree with the wisdom of Proverbs 16:31 which says, “Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.”
Even we, who call ourselves Christian, are tempted to become despondent and resentful as we grow older, causing us to age more like sour vinegar than sweet wine. We need to daily adjust our attitude toward seeing aging from a vantage point dramatically different from that of the non-Christian world.
In appealing for a corrective change in our attitudes, Biblical wisdom states that our latter years are the glory years? “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” (Proverbs 4:18).
To change our attitude toward viewing our life pilgrimage as a journey into “the full light of day” is to prepare us to see new visions, hear new sounds, and find new directions for living our latter years in continuing service to God and our fellow human beings .
In their book, Aging, God’s Challenge to Church & Synagogue, Richard Gentzler, Jr. and Donald Clingan state: “Aging can begrowing into the light in such a way that as we age, we see new visions, hear new sounds, and find new directions for living in service to God and to our fellow human beings. …aging is so filled with promises that it can lead us to discover more and more of life’s treasures. Aging is not a reason for despair, but a basis of hope; not a slow decaying, but a gradual maturing; not a fate to be undergone, but a change to be embraced.
The psalmist paints a beautiful word picture of the aging person in Psalms 92:12-14. The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green.”
These verses suggest that our aging has the potential for spiritual development and character refinement far beyond what we could imagine for ourselves. Our unique, individual, God-given gifts should improve and mature as we grow older. Our character should become more Christ-like as we grow in a deeply rooted relationship with God.
Katie Funk Wiebe says in her book, Border Crossing, p.201, “Old age is the proving ground of whatever one has believed, taught, and said.”
This is to say that all we have been in the earlier years of life now matures and flowers in our older years. Growing older leads us into new physical, social, and spiritual experiences and challenges, giving opportunity for the integration of life, accumulated knowledge and discernment to bless our journey.
I agree with those who say, “Aging is not an enemy to be conquered, but a friend to be cultivated.”
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“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – September 1, 2021
Ray M. Geigley
Healing Rays of Righteousness 
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