Monday Morning Manna: Age Along with Me

As of last week’s birthday, I have now lived three-quarters of a century. As one friend said, I am the oldest I’ve ever been and the youngest I’ll ever be again. Some days I feel very young. Maybe Spanish painter, poet and playwright, Pablo Picasso was right, “It takes a very long time to become young.” Other days, the aging process makes me feel very old, yet the French composer Daniel Auber was correct when he wrote, “Aging seems to be the only way available to live a long life.” Speaking of the aging process, I received one birthday message that said, “Congratulations! You are one year closer to Velcro shoes.” Max Lucado helps me see the positive side of growing older by writing, “Your last chapters can be your best. Your final song can be your greatest. It could be that all of your life has prepared you for a grand exit. God’s oldest have always been among his choicest.” I’d like to think the words were for me as well as for Isaiah, when God said, “Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you” (Isaiah 46:4). So I say with Robert Browning, to all of my reader friends who are aging, and that includes all, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.”

Dr. Dan Crawford, Senior Professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, is the WestCoast Baptist Association’s Spiritual Life & Leadership Mentor. Follow Dan on Twitter @DrDanRC and Facebook www.facebook.com/dan.crawford.