I remember sometime in my youth talking with an elderly person and noting that not only was his hair very white, but his skin was pale almost to the point of being white as well. Even his eyes seemed faded. I wondered, “Is that what happens when you get old? Do you just . . . fade away?”

Now that I’m nearer the category of “old,” I’ve learned that not everyone gets paler as they age. And no one ages in quite the same way: we’ve known people well into their eighties who traveled internationally as public speakers and even got married.

But it does seem we fade a bit in many ways. Win Couchman called it “The Grace to Be Diminished.”

First, energy decreases. We may not be able to do all we once did. We can’t push ourselves like we used to. Physical issues of various forms may creep up.

Then our influence can decrease. When we first visited a particular church in one state, a young woman was showing us where our Sunday School class would meet. As we passed one room, she said, “You don’t want to go there; that’s the old people’s class.” I suppose I should have felt gratified that she didn’t think I belonged in the old people’s class yet. But the attitude disturbed me. Later, in the same church, when facilitating a ladies’ group, a younger woman maybe in her mid-thirties told me she didn’t come to the ladies’ meetings because the attendees were all older women. Most of us were in our forties and fifties—we were by no means ancient. But I remember being shocked and hurt that someone would not want to be with us just because of our age.

We can lose our jobs and ministries as we retire.

We lose our independence as we have to give up our car keys and may not be able to live alone any more.

We lose our dignity as someone else has to feed and change us.

And eventually, we lose life itself.

That would all sound pretty dreary if that were the end of things.

But we were told that life would be fleeting.

“What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14).

“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle” (Job 7:6).

The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away (Psalm 90:10).

“We all do fade as a leaf” (Isaiah 64:6, KJV).

A radio preacher said one reason our bodies start falling apart as we get older is to encourage us to let loose of them. We need the reminder that this life is not forever.

C. S. Lewis said in The Problem of Pain, “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). This world, as the old song says, is not our ultimate home. Our transitions as we age help prepare us for our true home.

Does that mean when we reach a certain age, we just sit in our rocking chairs and wait to die? By no means.

Elisabeth Elliot has said that our limitations don’t hinder our ministry; they define our ministry. We may not be able to coordinate VBS for 100 children any more (if you can, go for it!) But we can pray with the psalmist, “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come” (Psalm 71:17-18).

How we proclaim His might and wondrous deeds may vary. We might be able to teach a class, write a book, or speak to groups. However, I’ve often thought that when Paul told older men and women to teach the younger, he probably didn’t have classes and retreats in mind. There’s nothing wrong with those; I have been blessed by many of them. But they probably weren’t done in Bible times. I think he probably had in mind interaction in the everyday course of life.

Godly women have influenced my life in just that way. One family had me over frequently as a teenager who came to church alone. I don’t think the wife of the family thought of me as a “project.” She was just being hospitable. Yet visiting their family and seeing her interact as a wife, mother, and homemaker was instructive for me.

Another woman passed along a vital piece of advice as we worked on a church bulletin board together that shaped my thinking in parenting teens. Another said something in passing while we worked in the church nursery that greatly encouraged me. Another was an invaluable and unwitting example to me as she was trying to prepare an event for a group, and her husband asked her for something in a critical moment. She didn’t snap; she closed her eyes briefly and then calmly directed him to what he needed.

Jesus said that we speak with our mouths out of the abundance of our hearts. As we fill our souls with God’s presence and Word and seek His guidance, then we will be able to share about Him in odd moments as we interact with others.

As another psalmist said, we can tell “things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,and the wonders that he has done. . . that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments” (Psalm 78:3-4, 6-7).

We don’t have to approach our old age with dread.

God has promised to take care of us: “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (Isaiah 46:4).

He has promised our fruitfulness: “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” (Psalm 92:14-15).

He has promised a bright future to those who know Him. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

As we look back at His faithfulness all our lives, we can trust Him for the future. These stanzas from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, “My Birthday,” encourage me: I hope they’ll encourage you as well.

I grieve not with the moaning wind
As if a loss befell;
Before me, even as behind,
God is, and all is well!

His light shines on me from above,
His low voice speaks within,–
The patience of immortal love
Outwearying mortal sin.

Not mindless of the growing years
Of care and loss and pain,
My eyes are wet with thankful tears
For blessings which remain.

Let winds that blow from heaven refresh,
Dear Lord, the languid air;
And let the weakness of the flesh
Thy strength of spirit share.

And, if the eye must fail of light,
The ear forget to hear,
Make clearer still the spirit’s sight,
More fine the inward ear!

Be near me in mine hours of need
To soothe, or cheer, or warn,
And down these slopes of sunset lead
As up the hills of morn!

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