Inevitable if you live
June 11, 2008 (Wednesday)
I like science fiction, especially the optimistic variety, like “E.T.” It’s fun to live for a little while in an impossible dimension, where the imagination is allowed to roam freely up and down the corridors of the mind.
Today I saw an episode of one of the futuristic space travel TV series, in which a planet was discovered whose people were born old and became younger each year. After living 96 years, a little girl was coming to the end of her days.
Of course that’s pure fiction, and that’s not the way life works. We are born helpless, needing constant care, and life itself is a learning experience as we develop from one stage of life to the next.
If we are fortunate enough to live a long time, we begin to feel the effects of aging, and some of them are not pleasant. That’s why we have Ecclesiastes 12 in our Bibles, that warns us, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth!” The chapter is a litany of troubles that befall the elderly, making the point that we need to give God our best when we are at our best, physically.
We are also to remember the Lord and give Him our best when we are old. For the purpose of this article, I am tempted to recite my own physical problems, but as I think about them, I’m more inclined to try to avoid thinking about them. Suffice it so say, as people age, they have a lot of physical limitations and discomforts. For some it’s much worse than that; for others, it’s better than that.
Each of us should remember the words of the Apostle Paul, and live so that we are able to say with him at the close of our days, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7 NIV).