How to Stay Young

Age and Aging

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.

Germaine De Stael 1766-1817, French-Swiss Novelist

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. NASU

Robert Browning said, “Grow old with me the best is yet to come.” What I firmly believe is that age is an attitude more than it is a measure of time. The attitude that we carry really shows in our lives, and more so on our faces. I say that sad faces have more wrinkles, but wrinkled faces have more smiles. The young will be old, and the worst thing that we can do as we grow older is to wish to be young again.

I have heard wrinkles described in different ways, and one advantage I have heard that comes with wrinkles is that they hide the scars. The one place we need to keep the wrinkles out of though is our hearts, Thomas Aldrich said it this way, “To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.” In other words we don’t have to have wrinkled hearts.

I was looking at a recent picture of my dad the other day, and he said this, “I never think of myself as that old until I see a picture of myself, and then I am reminded of my age. Now that is good evidence of an unwrinkled heart. But, how do we keep our hearts in this unwrinkled condition? We do it by remembering that the best is yet to come. God has promised us that and it is something that we need to remind ourselves of everyday of our existence.

If we really believe that then we will have fond memories, but not long to live them again. We will still have an earnest hope and excitement about our tomorrows at ninety as we did at nineteen. Thomas Carlyle the Scottish Philosopher said this about aging, “The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” You see that is what my dad was saying, inside I am still the same as I was at nineteen, and the outside of me does not reflect who I am within.

Is this true of you this morning, are you feeling your age, or are you timeless? It seems we all want to live long but, we never want to grow old. Well, there is only one place I know of where that can happen, and I’m getting closer to it everyday. I’m going to remember that, what about you…God Bless.

Pastor William