Why I Embrace Old Age! - What's good about aging?

By most accounts, I'm an old guy now. I received my Medicare card in the mail this year, having reached that age when I qualify for every senior discount anybody cares to give. I remember the first time a McDonald's restaurant worker gave me a senior discount on a cup of coffee. I think I was in my early to mid-50s then, and I found it a little bit irritating. Nowadays, I gratefully receive such discounts without feeling the least indignation. I'm a senior and I look it. I carry the scars of decades of struggle and wrestling with the world, the flesh, and the devil. I've seen a lot of changes in this world. When I was born, Dwight Eisenhower was the president. In my childhood, we watched TV on the four basic channels we could receive through our rabbit ears on our small black-and-white set. Saturday mornings were a kid's paradise in TV programming. One of my favorites was Mighty Mouse. Pretty corny and simple by today's standards, but I thought it was just great watching that superhero mouse save his mouse village from the evil dastardly cats. I also enjoyed Tom Terrific, Mr. Magoo, Top Cat, and Yogi Bear. All of us kids look forward to summer vacation, which meant three months without school. I spent much of my summers outdoors, partly looking for adventure and partly to escape the tremendous heat that would build up in our non-air-conditioned house during those blistering St. Louis summers. My childhood days are long gone. I did what all kids do. I grew up and was transformed gradually from child to adolescent and from adolescent to young adult. Along the way, at the age of 19, I gave my life to Jesus. That happened in 1973, and a lot of years have come and gone since those days. I've weaved in and out of many varied seasons of my life from those days until now. Being an analytical sort, I've thought quite a bit about this phenomenon of aging, and I wanted to share a few of my thoughts about it. Getting old has both pros and cons. Thoughts don't come as quickly as they used to for me, and sometimes I find myself in a room wondering why I entered that room. Then I leave and figure out some time later why I went there and have to go there all over again. I stumble in speech a bit more than I used to. In fact, if you could hear my recorded devos in their original form, you'd find it painful to listen to. Thank the Lord for video and audio editing programs. Now, that may sound a little depressing, but it's really not as bad as it sounds. Here's a newsflash. I've talked with a number of men and women from my generation, and none of them would ever want to go back in a time machine and live their lives all over again. Most of us have had relatively pleasant lives, but we've also faced enough struggles and experienced enough disappointments and rejections and pain, and we just wouldn't be eager to go and do it all over again. But our contentment with our age and station in life is more than merely a desire not to suffer. We feel we're near graduation. Why would we possibly want to start the process all over again? Go to a young man or woman who studied hard for a university degree and is just weeks away from graduating and entering into the career for which they've trained so long and worked so hard. Ask them if they'd like to start all over again as little five-year-old kindergarten children. I don't think you could find one out of a thousand who would consider that a good thing. Now, I might not feel this way if I were an atheist or an agnostic. I suppose I would cling desperately to life, trying to eke out a little more pleasure before I face that long eternal silence of non-existence. But in Jesus Christ, we simply do not believe this will be our future. We're confident that through Jesus, the best is yet to come. My body may be giving out, my mind may be slipping a few gears, and I may not look nearly so good as I did at 25, but I face an eternal youth with Jesus in a place called heaven, where my Lord awaits me. Jesus declares, I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself.