Preparing for ageing

[AI translation] As you already know: today we are having our annual Old and Sick Sunday in our congregation. This means that we are sending a few flowers and a greeting letter as a special remembrance to those members of our congregation who, due to advanced age or illness, cannot be with us for worship.I would like to use this new occasion to put into the light of the Word a problem that C. Jung, one of the greatest psychologists of recent times, once expressed: 'We human beings enter the twilight of life totally unprepared, and worse still, full of a lot of false illusions...'
It is not that we are financially unprepared for the age when we can no longer work, because in this respect social care: pensions, old-age insurance, provide increasing comfort to the ageing person, but that we are internally unprepared for old age. That is why, despite the increasing material security, most people become so joyless, restless, bitter, disappointed, abandoned and suspicious in the twilight of their lives.
Perhaps this is the problem that the author of Psalm 90 had in mind when he pleaded with God: 'Teach us to number our days so that we may have a wise heart'.
Above all, we need it so much because man counts himself out so easily and so quickly, like the man in the parable who counted many years. He thought he still had a long time to live, and that very night God asked for his soul. One expects years, decades, and does not know that he may have only days. In any case, we must learn that this earthly life is only a very short little stage in the flow of time, and it can end at any moment, at any moment.
I recently buried a man in the fullness of his strength who, without any premonition or foreboding of the end to come, took the tram one afternoon in the best of moods. At the next stop, he was unconscious when he was taken from him, and by the time the ambulance arrived, they could only pronounce that he had died. We could all tell you similar stories, but that's not what's important here, what's important is that we always live with the knowledge that the two letters engraved on the back of our hands are a constant reminder: Memento Mori, or remember death.
For man, in his strength, tends to forget how long he will live. And when the Psalmist says, The days of our years are 70 years, or if it be more than 80 years, this does not mean that every man will live for 70 or 80 years, but it also means that our life is fixed, limited.
We humans are generally inclined to forget this, and worse still, we almost try to push it out of our minds. It is an unpleasant, even unbearable thought for us. We do not want to remember death, and as much as possible and as far as we can, we gloss over the whole concept of death, disguise it and push it far away from us, as if it were not even relevant at any given moment.
Well, a man counts his days with a wise heart when he comes to terms with death. And this is not only the problem of old age, but the problem of life in general. Jesus said, "Be ready at all times, for you do not know at what hour your Lord will come" (Matthew 24:42). At all times, not just when you are fifty or sixty, but at all ages, from childhood to old age. At all times.
And to be ready, you know, is to believe in Christ with full assurance of forgiveness of sins, forgiveness of one's sins, and eternal life. "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark 8:37). But it is not necessary to give anything, for God has already given Jesus, this living piece of his own love made flesh, "that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16.) He who truly believes in Him, but in such a way as to be seen in Him, can count on being able to appear before God with peace of mind when his soul is claimed. For whoever truly believes in Him has forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Yes. You are counting your days with a wise heart if you seek as soon as possible to be fully assured that you are saved by Christ unto eternal life. This is the first and most important part of preparing for old age: living your life on earth in the assurance of salvation.
But there is another problem here. Man is willing to live with the consciousness, the attitude, that the day of life will never end. Indeed, with the illusion that the sun is constantly rising as it moves forward. And yet, as the Psalmist says, life is "like the grass that grows in the morning, it blossoms and grows in the morning, and withers and withers in the evening." (90:5-6). Our life also has its morning, its evening and its evening, that is, a time when the sun rises, when everything springs up and blooms. It has its dusk, when everything is in splendour, and its twilight, a time of falling leaves and withering, and finally its evening, its night, when everything is dried and mowed down.
Day and night are as unbreakable as life and death. Each period has its own particular light and colour.
The rising sun has a very different light from the setting sun. In the morning of life, the horizon widens and widens. Unknown horizons beckon us. The world and life are open before us, full of promise. Then soon comes the delirium. This noon, just like a beautiful summer day, can often last quite a long time. But there comes a moment when one realises that it is already dusk. Evening is approaching. This realisation, this awareness, changes one's whole perspective on life. The horizon no longer widens, opening up new horizons, but narrows, becomes more defined and comes closer... The whole of life and the whole world begins to be seen in a different light. The whole person changes.
And this period of change often ends with very deep, inner upheavals and storms. It is one of the greatest periods of crisis in a person's life. Bigger and more unpleasant than puberty. Oh, how very timely at such a time, what the psalmist prayed: "Teach us to number our days so that we may find a wise heart." (verse 12). Those who do not count their days with God-given wisdom, who do not live through this period of crisis in their lives, can often do very foolish things. It is at this time, in the anxiety before the door closes, that men and women make most of the mistakes in their lives. It's good to be aware of that.
The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child: but after I became a man, I left the things that were proper for a child". "I have left," he says, or the literal translation of the original text is "I have laid down." It sounds so simple, yet it often takes a great struggle to put something down. Whereas, for example, a man who has matured into a man can put down the things that are appropriate for a child. This putting down is one of the greatest secrets of a wise life. For afterwards one must not only put down what was fit for a child, but also later on what was fit for the delirium of life at some time. And the older one gets, the more one has to "put down". In time we must learn to let go, to give up, to put things down. And this letting go is sometimes a difficult and painful operation. One wants to keep the richness of the delirium of life constant, to hold it in one's hands.
The great mystery of the wisdom of the Gospel of life is to learn in time, which Jesus expressed in this way: 'For whoever wants to keep his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will find it' (Mark 8:35). In other words, whoever wants to keep everything for himself will become poor, and whoever dares to let things go, to let go of his hands, will become rich. So it is, for example, with the parent who dares to let go of his adult child, to let him go off and live his own life, and does not want to keep it for himself - he usually does not lose his child, and in fact, that is how he really gets it back. One counts one's days with a wise heart when one learns to live in this world as one who gives and not as one who demands. He who prepares himself for old age who learns from a young age the art of renunciation, of letting go without bitterness or resentment, and in the happy knowledge that sacrifice never makes a man poorer, but always makes him richer.
And finally, there is another problem here. The public opinion in which we actually live is afraid not only of death, but of the passing of the years themselves. One of the many false ideals of our culture is precisely the desire to be young at all costs. Yet youth, youth is a stage in a person's life. How can a stage in the journey of life be turned into a goal? And yet the ideal of youth plays a very important role in people's emotions and thoughts. They try to stretch the life phase of youth as long as possible, so that it can permeate all the other phases of life. The motto is that you are as old as you feel. So if you don't want to grow old, you stay young. In the face of this nonsense, it is good to acknowledge the sober truth that you are exactly as old as you are. But people our age do not like to hear that.
A whole technique has been developed to preserve at least the appearance of youthfulness, even if the operation means losing all the features and personality of the face. It is a technique that sees the triumph of its feverish ambition in being able to change the grandmother by competing in youth with her granddaughter. According to this public opinion, ageing is the most terrifying horror of life. The things people do to disguise the signs of ageing, both to themselves and to those around them! There is a great inner protest against ageing, which of course makes the inner conflict all the greater. One pretends to be young, as if the sun were still rising, and then, completely unprepared, darkness falls upon one, and night falls upon one. Oh, yes, our fundamental prayer is very important: "Teach us to number our days so that we may have a wise heart." Or to live our days in such a way that we can unmask the false ideal of youthfulness.
And to reckon with the fact that, yes, with each passing day I grow older. Old age is not a terrible thing to be afraid of. The evening of life is not only a lamentable function of the day, but old age has its own specific purpose and meaning, otherwise God would not let us grow old. Let us never see life as a roundabout way of life, as if the old man were returning to a certain second childhood, but as a progress, as a growth in grace, a maturing process for eternity.
The characteristic of old age is that one is beyond the hard struggles and labours of life, and can now be all the more immersed in the peace of God. The older one gets, the more one must live and express what in fact every Christian, at every age, should live out: peace with God, intimate friendship with the Lord. Every Christian man is always a beggar, a servant and a friend to God. The old man has the privilege of becoming less and less a beggar and a servant, and more and more a friend of God. What a source of blessing to his surroundings, with his gentle peace, his intercessory prayer to God, can a dear old friend like Abraham be. Do not fear old age, but rather look upon it as being more and more illumined by the light of the approaching morning of eternity, the glory of Christ's resurrection.
Older and younger, let us pray with the Psalmist, "Teach us, Lord, to number our days so that we may grow wise in heart".
Amen
Date: 17 July 1962 (Sunday of the old and sick).