Old Age
BY the four seasons of the year God creates four worlds in one, and by the four periods of life our God brings out in one selfsame human life four altogether different lives.
It is one selfsame world, which through all the months of the year turns itself upon its axis before the face of God, and just because God withdraws somewhat the glow of the sun or makes him approach a little nearer, He makes that world four times appear in an altogether different form, in an entirely different aspect, every time with a beauty of its own and with a particular speech of His majesty.
The world in winter is something altogether different from that same world in summer. But he who has an eye for it, sees in both a special glory, such beauty as from God’s hand alone can be poured out upon the creature.
This is the richness of the Lord Jehovah. This is the mark of His Divinity. From an almost unnamable small cause such wondrous effect. An effect which penetrates everything, and which already in the mere snowflake and in the water-drop presents and symbolizes two altogether different worlds, which even as the snowflake and the water-drop themselves are one in essence, and unobservedly pass over the one into the other.
In a similar way God deals with your life. Take it to be eighty years. That is the full measure of a period of twenty years, four times round. First your spring, till you are full grown. Then the summer of your life in the fulness of your strength. After that the harvest till your sixty years are ended. And finally, with whiteness of snow on the head, the winter of your life, till God calls you away, and you are carried out to the grave.
As with the seasons so here the transitions are scarcely observable. Each of these periods of time imparts to your human life an entirely other existence and appearance. And yet in every one of these four periods life has an excellency of its own, in which your God and your Creator glorifies His creative majesty.
UNDOUBTEDLY of these four periods of human life old age is least desired. In the wealth of spring to flourish and to be young; as man or woman, ripened and altogether matured, to count along with others in life; and so likewise to live the years of autumn, in which the fruit loosens itself from the branches; all this animates and charms. But when old age and grayness arrive, there is the beginning of the waning of strength, of the cooling down, of the shrinkage of life, and above all, when provisions are none too bountiful, there are few days so dreaded and feared as the days of old age.
And there is reason for it.
“Old age has its infirmities,” says a proverb. And it cannot be denied, that to feel one’s vital powers fail, to feel the light in one’s eyes darken, and to be conscious of loss in keenness of hearing, and to be hindered in freedom of motion, does not appeal to the heart, but goes against the urge of our nature.
Especially at the end this becomes irksome and oppressive, when it comes to what the Preacher sang about already thousands of years ago, when “the keepers of the house (legs and arms) shall tremble”; when his walk becomes unsteady and the grinders cease because they are few; when “the two doors toward the street (our eyes) shall be shut”; when sleep is gone and the old man wakens before it is day, “at the voice of the bird”; when the daughter of music, i.e., your voice, shall be brought low; when the almond tree white on your head shall flourish; and he is fearful by the roadside, until at length bent and trembling “as a grasshopper he wanders about, and all desire shall fail him.”
Herein is suffering, a going out of the lamp of life until it is extinguished. A slow dying, before yet the hour of death strikes.
A taking of last steps on the pilgrim-way.
For man goeth to his long home, and his dust shall return to the earth, when his spirit returns again to God Who gave it.
THUS is the way to our Nebo, to that high mountain-top, from whose summit God shall show us Canaan.
Though you yourself have climbed no Nebo or Hermon, you can readily picture to yourself the course of such an ascent.
First walking for hours amidst flowers and through orchards, to reach the foot of the mountain. Then an easy ascent of slopes through forests of oaks and pines, image of midlife summer-strength. After that the forests behind you, and now the high uplands, where no tree can flourish. And from this autumn-nature, you ascend at length to the snow-field, that never melts away, and the cold of the ice-field numbs the skin. This with mountain-climbing is your winter, image of old age. And then it goes ever higher to the top, until finally there is nothing more that breaks your visual line. and on that top you kneel in adoration, to glorify your God, Who alone is great, in the majesty of His creation.
Below, in the tablelands of earth, the fostering glow and the wealth of vegetation. But on the heights ice and snow, and a chill that makes you shiver. But yet on that frozen mountain-top, amidst that bareness and nakedness of rocks, nearest heaven, the broadest outlook upon the glory and the greatness and the majesty of your God.
If such your old age might be, you feel indeed the cold, and are conscious of the emptiness around you. and you learn to pray more fervently: “O, My God, now that I am old and grayheaded, forsake not thy servant, forsake not thy handmaid” (Ps. 71, 18), but you will also find in that old age itself a bundle of blessings hidden by your God. and for that old age you will be able to offer Him thanks.
Always if you believe. If your hope stands forever sure. If your seeking eye may gaze toward the gate of the new-Jerusalem above.
For truly, an old man, who unconverted and with his heart hardened, continues anxiously to hold himself fast to the world, and trembles at the thought, that “the silver cord is being loosed,” as Solomon describes it, he is miserable.
Everything he had set his heart upon slips away from him. The world, in which he sought his life, in the end laughs at him, and is the first to put him to a side and then in the corner. Until finally he is still endured for a while as a burden of life, and then is laid away in the grave.
But when back of the eye that has grown dim, the spark of heavenly light may glisten, God makes old age to be so entirely different to us, so rich in many ways, a continual refreshment of soul.
A blood, that courses less fast, and therefore silenced the storm of temper and passion, whereby in former years the struggle was so hard and so bitter before the face of God.
Sin still creeping after, but yet as fruit of much godly exercise and rich experience of soul, more easily resisted, and the danger of being taken unawares by Satan’s guiles, considerably lessened.
Looser from earthly goods, and in one’s own self less irritable. Thereby calmer of nature and more restful in mind. More equable day by day. More used to carrying the cross, and thereby no longer so readily succumbing under the weight of the same.
In the Word of his God more deeply initiated. More at home in His holinesses. The soul more accustomed to the still waters of His salvation.
So following after the Good Shepherd, by His rod and by His staff comforted. Inwardly rejoicing in God’s hidden walk. His blessed fellowship less distant. And dwelling more continuously in the tent of His Divine presence.
By reason of this known of God’s people. More fervently loved by his own. Not abandoned, but sought for wiser counsel. And because of the peace that radiates from him loved by all those whose heart goes out to the eternal.
Meanwhile each day gazing more clearly into eternity, to the fatherland above. Ever more irresistibly drawn. And already now enjoying a foretaste of what once it shall be with Jesus above, in the congregation of the just made perfect, in the unbroken fellowship of his God.
TO whom it is given of God’s free grace, thus to grow old, there is a holy beauty about old age. which he would on no account exchange for a return of the days of his youth.
He who thus may be old, continues, aged though he be, young of heart.
He feels, indeed, that the outward tabernacle of his life is being dissolved, but life within does not grow less, but more, becomes not poorer, but richer. He observes that far from being at the end of things, he only now approaches the mountains back of which the eternal morning spreads beams of glowing light. Yet a while, a few more mile-posts, and his real life, his life, that shall never die away, begins.
Only let him who would have such a green old age, not wait to prepare for this until old age is upon him. but already in the days of his strength lay foundations for such a beautiful decline of life.
Let him understand well, that nothing burdens old age more bitterly, than the pitiful remembrance of sins that have been dragged along, of deeds of infidelity, of denials of his Savior, of the urge of love choked in the urge of self.
So many aged men, so many women of years do not know the glory of old age, because in earlier years they have demanded too much of the body, have neglected health. have tainted the soul, have spotted the conscience, and have lived their faith too much on their lips, and too little in their heart.
And for this even in old age there is medicine to be had with the Only Physician. Jesus, Who on earth never knew old age, is ready to refresh aged people with the fruit of His offering. Simeon with his snow-white hair, holding the infant Jesus in his arms, and saying: “Let now thy servant depart in peace, O Lord, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,” remains the enticing image of the aged, who comforts himself in his Savior.
But yet, he who first, when he is old, when his strength is more and more broken, seeks Jesus, faces a hard battle. Also the members of the soul with people of years are no longer supple, but stiff and rigid. A man of sixty and more years, who converts himself to his Savior, is very rare.
And therefore he who when old age is upon him, would not wander about abandoned of his God, let him seek his God while He may be found.
Not first when he is old, but in the days of his youth, in the years of his midlife strength.
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