by James Webb
Over the past half a decade or so, I’ve gradually moved into my new home over in the land of Middle-Age. It’s a wonderful Tolkienesque place where you now need to get up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and your shoulder is still twinging even though it’s been nearly a week since you lifted that suitcase. Read more
I’m sitting in Gatwick airport in that limbo just before we’re supposed to board our plane – that space when you’re simultaneously on holiday and not on holiday. It’s Schrodinger’s Holiday. As I sit there, I’m reading Jesus’ words in John 12:24-28. Read more
“It is the dreadful lie of our culture that you must take the great adventures while you are young. Maybe so in abseiling and Bungee Jumping; but it is not so in the truly dangerous business of the Kingdom.”
Peter Volkofsky
It’s definitely true that our culture lionises youth. Getting old is seen as a backwards step; a decline; a curse rather than a blessing. But if you’re bemoaning your lost youth then you’ve done nothing more than bought into another lie. There’s a Native American saying: “No wise person ever wanted to be younger”. The truth is that if you’re living well, then you’ll be growing in character and wisdom. If you’re giving your relationship with God the attention that it deserves then you are more like Christ today than you were this time last year. If this is the case, then you’re actually more useful to God now than you used to be, and you’ll become even more useful the older that you get. The Bible is full of elderly heroes; men and women who didn’t hit their stride until the years of experience had caught up with them, and the wisdom of suffering had tempered and focused their youthful energy. Jesus himself spent his youth preparing for the tasks of middle-age. Let me add this: if you aren’t nurturing your relationship with God then you’ve got bigger problems than aching muscles, saggy skin and unwanted hair.
Be encouraged. The world may tell you that your glory days are behind you; that your purpose now is to grow old quietly and aim for nothing more than to be a productive member of United Kingdom PLC, but I tell you that God has plans.
