September 24, 2014 (Wednesday)
Today is my birthday. I’m 83.
When I was growing up, adulthood started when one reached the age of 21. I remember going to bed the night before my 21st birthday, wondering if I would feel any different the next morning. Well, I didn’t.
Birthdays are our way of measuring how long we have lived to date. If no one had ever thought of recognizing the anniversary of our birth, we might never have started the practice. The result, I suppose would be a measurement of age based upon how we look or how we feel.
The Bible says the standard length of life is 70 years, and if we are strong, then 80. I looked at the list of obituaries in the Corpus paper this week, and out of a total of 14, one was older than I and one was the same age as I. The others, 86% of the total, were younger than I. Wow, I thought everyone was supposed to be living longer nowadays, at least I read that somewhere, I think.
Another word I heard somewhere along life’s pathway, was, “It’s not how long you live that matters, but how well you live.” I’m sure that’s the absolute truth, but I’m still thankful that the Lord has allowed me to live to this age. Sometimes I feel guilty about not living a better life when people I have loved lived so well but not long enough, it seemed to me.
I also read about life expectancy according to where you live. Those in Monaco have the longest, at 88.2, and those in Sierra Leone the shortest, at 47.5. I answered a very brief survey I found on the internet and it concluded that I will live to be 89. That’s six years. When I put it that way, it sounds ominous. I did one of those tests a few years ago and it said I would live to be 92. I exercised more back then.
The truth? It’s in the Lord’s hands (Psalm 31:15).