Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent.” vs. 9
Psalm 71:1-14
We should not be surprised to see a psalm written by an old person who is not feeling particularly good about having moved into the “golden” years. After all, old people have been around for a long time and pretty much all of them have the same laments about their declining strength and loss of status. At a time when memory can begin to fail, and peers are dropping like flies, it’s not at all unusual to begin to question our relationship with God. Like the Psalmist some have trusted God through their entire lives – faith came to them as a child and they’ve never wavered in their allegiance to their Rock and their Fortress. But as we lose our connections in the community of faith and even our families grow distant, loneliness seems our only companion. Of course we battle on! We know how precious life is, and that we do what we can with diets, exercise, crossword puzzles and even memory pills to stay relevant and stave off the approach of the end. It can be taxing, this constant obsession with aging, and some find themselves thinking of little else. How good it is when, like another psalmist, we realize that our times are in God’s hands, and our fretting is a needless distraction. When we come to that point, hope springs alive once more, our lips return to praising God, and joy comes to visit every morning.
Thought for the Day: The joy that comes with aging!
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