After age 30 or so, each milestone birthday becomes more sobering. Age 60 hit me particularly hard. There’s no question that there are more years behind me than ahead of me. Though I hope to still have another two or three decades, my strength and stamina show obvious signs of slowing down.

I’ve never had trouble admitting my age until I turned 60. I was past the time of claiming to be middle-aged, yet I didn’t consider myself to be really old yet. I still felt relevant, but I was afraid younger people would see me as past my prime, no longer worthy to be listened to.

One frustration of aging is increasing health problems. I suppose most people don’t go full steam until the day they die. Most of us undergo a gradual breaking down of various functions. I heard a radio preacher say one reason our bodies start failing is to make us willing to let go of them. We have a strong instinct to survive, but at some point, this body will get to a place where we’ll realize it’s no longer worth trying to preserve it. But even long before that time, doctor’s visits and medications increase.

What’s even more unsettling for me is that the age I will turn this August is the same age both my parents died. They had bad health habits and conditions that I don’t have–but I have some that they didn’t have. I am reminding myself that my times are in God’s hands.

I’m encouraged by reports of people my age and older achieving great things. Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65 when she published her first book. Grandma Moses began serious painting at the age of 78. Harlen Sanders established the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants when he was 65. Peter Mark Roget published his first thesaurus at the age of 73.

Most of us don’t have such lofty goals for our later years (although I would like to publish a book). We’d be happy just to be able to get around on our own steam and not be a burden to anyone.

In a recent post by Tim Challies, he included a quote by De Witt Talmage that arrested me:

. . . there is something for you yet to do. Perhaps it may be to round off the work you have already done; to demonstrate the patience you have been recommending all your lifetime; perhaps to stand a lighthouse at the mouth of the bay to light others into harbor; perhaps to show how glorious a sunset may come after a stormy day.

Those are things any of us could do. With however many years I have left, I want to share with my family, readers here, and friends at church and elsewhere, that God is faithful, God is good, and God is worth knowing.

When it feels like God is silent or absent, He is not. He has promised never to leave or forsake His own. 

When answers to prayer seem a long time coming, God’s timing is best. 

When you feel forsaken, God is with you.

He is the truest friend, the wisest guide, the strongest ally, the most loving Father.

His Word is a treasure chest. Delve into as often as you can, not just as an exercise or ritual, but to know the Author. 

On all of my sons’ graduation materials, whether a card or the “senior page” in their yearbooks, I shared the first part of this verse:

And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever. (1 Chronicles 28:9).

I usually share this verse on graduation cards:

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

I’ve also often shared this with others:

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified (Acts 20:32).

These are the messages I want to share and demonstrate for as long as I live. 

Rosalind Goforth shared this poem at the beginning of her book, Climbing: Memories of a Missionary Wife. It has stayed with me for years and epitomizes what I want my life, ministry, and legacy to be:

If you have gone a little way ahead of me, call back;
‘Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track;
And if, perchance, Faith’s light is dim, because the oil is low,
Your call will guide my lagging course as wearily I go.

Call back, and tell me that He went with you into the storm;
Call back, and say He kept you when the forest’s roots were torn;
That when the heavens thundered and the earthquake shook the hill,
He bore you up and held you where the very air was still.

O friend, call back and tell me, for I cannot see your face;
They say it glows with triumph, and your feet bound in the race;
But there are mists between us, and my spirit eyes are dim,
And I cannot see the glory, though I long for word of Him.

But if you’ll say He heard you when your prayer was but a cry,
And if you’ll say He saw you through the night’s sin-darkened sky
If you have gone a little way ahead, O friend, call back
‘Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track.

Author Unknown

Whatever else we can or can’t do as we get older, we can join with the psalmist in praying:

I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
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.

He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
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 78:2-7

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)