June 25

June 25: That's Sobering

This past week has included some benchmark events, and left me with a few things to consider.

Upon celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary, I realized we've been married longer than most of our church people have been alive. Sobering.

Upon checking out at my favored grocery store (the one where I can actually find stuff) Dolores the checker lady asked what I do with my time, now that I am retired. I told her I am not retired. I told her I have no intention of retiring. She was incredulous. Sobering.

Perhaps related to that, one of us celebrated a birthday yesterday. A birthday not too far from what most people assume is retirement age. Some circles would say mandatory retirement age. Sobering.

Also yesterday, I had a phone conversation with my dearest brother in ministry. He told me what he would eventually like to be doing. I told him what I would eventually like to be doing. These respective preferred futures are not the same. Perhaps complementary, but not the same. The fact we're even having that conversation is sobering.

It's funny (or sobering) to see how certain Scripture verses make a lot more sense now than they may have in the past. Because I can identify with or aspire to certain truths and promises now, when I perhaps could not before.

Psalm 92:12-15 is now one of those. A promise, and a promise I find myself clinging to.

"The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar of Lebanon." (I cannot say I have necessarily flourished during the past year and a half, but I'll keep reading.)

"They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God." (While I'm well aware I am planted in Juneau, Alaska, I will say that the past 15 months have seen me grow, exponentially, in my awareness and relationship with Jesus.)

Now the promise I cling to part. "They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the LORD is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him."

I want that. I want to be that. And it seems I have been given reminders, benchmark events or conversations over the past seven days that convince me of two things:

I need to get to accepting my age, and the stuff that comes with aging. This is a station of life I need to embrace, instead of deny. (Native Southern Californians like me were born and raised to deny aging, so this battle is not yet won.)

And second, and more important, I see now that I need help. I cannot alone bear any good gospel fruit, now or in the future. I cannot invent or maintain my capacity to be green or full of sap (which I take to mean being filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit) without the Spirit's presence and help.

As I get older, and perhaps mature a bit more, I see more than ever how the LORD is upright. He is my rock. There is no unrighteousness in Him. We all, including me, change with life's seasons. He doesn't.

(Side note: I also note how many of the OT prophets and NT church leaders God used were older guys. Maybe it took them longer to be ready and useful. I like that.)

With that promised security, joyful assurance yet sobering reality, I want to continue to and expand my initiative, ability and opportunities to declare that the Lord is upright, a rock, totally righteous.

Any and all of that will come solely through God's grace to me, and only to the measure He chooses to grant it to me.

Knowing full well it will likely not involve any personal retirement status, real or imagined.

That's sobering.