The Country Of Old Age
In the book Another Country, author Mary Pipher met with people in their seventies, eighties, and nineties who were confronting many different life situations.
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Like A Tree
In the quietness of my final years I plan to watch a tree grow—a birch tree I planted as a tiny sapling over 30 years ago. It stands now in mature splendor, just outside our picture window—beautiful in every season of the year.
Read More »Retirement Time
After working for 40 years as a teacher, Jane Hanson retired. She and her husband were looking forward to the arrival of their first grandchild.
Read More »Land Of Eternal Spring
The former president of Columbia Bible College in South Carolina, J. Robertson McQuilkin, pointed out that God has a wise purpose in letting us grow old and weak:
Read More »Too Old?
When God promised Abraham and his wife Sarah that they would have a son, Abraham laughed in unbelief and replied, “Shall a child be born to a man who is one hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” (Gen. 17:17).
Read More »Never Too Old
The women of Brown Manor had raised their families and retired from their careers. Now they could no longer live on their own, so they came to Brown Manor as a sort of “last stop before heaven.” They enjoyed each other’s company but often struggled with feelings of uselessness. Sometimes they even questioned why God was so slow in taking them to heaven.
Read More »The Aging Process
I was having breakfast with a friend who had recently celebrated his 60th birthday. We discussed the “trauma” of the number 6 being the first digit in his age and all that the age of 60 implies (retirement, social security, etc.). We also pondered the fact that he felt so much younger than such a “large” number would seem to indicate.
Read More »Better With Age
Some people are obsessed with physical fitness—daily workouts, vitamins, organic food—in spite of the fact that our bodies keep ticking away in inevitable decline. In our twenties and thirties we think we’re invincible, but in the decades that follow, the eyesight starts to go, then the knees, then the mind. Let’s face it, trying to ensure long-lasting physical health is like trying to stem the tide with a pitchfork!
Read More »Anti-Aging Power
Americans spend more than $20 billion annually on various anti-aging products that claim to cure baldness, remove wrinkles, build muscle, and renew the powers of youth. Can those products deliver what they promise? Dr. Thomas Perls of Boston University School of Medicine says there is “absolutely no scientific proof that any commercially available product will stop or reverse aging.”
Read More »New Bodies
In 1728, a young Ben Franklin composed his own tombstone epitaph:
Read More »My Staff
An antique rack in the entryway to our home holds the canes and walking-sticks of several generations of our family. My favorite is a slender staff with a gold-plated knob engraved with the initials “DHR.” It belonged to my wife Carolyn’s great-grandfather, Daniel Henry Rankin. Curiously, his initials are the same as mine.
Read More »A Glimpse Of Glory
Age has its troubles-failing hearing and eyesight, forgetfulness, aching backs, arthritic hands. These are intimations that we are wasting away. Yet, Paul insisted, inwardly we are “being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:16-17). How so?
Read More »Living In Retirement
As our plane landed at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, applause broke out among a group of airline employees. I thought this was a bit unusual, until I was told that the pilot had just completed the last flight of his career. He would retire the next day, and his colleagues were expressing their happiness for him.
Read More »Think Young
In the book Geeks and Geezers, authors Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas present a fascinating look at “how era, values, and defining moments shape leaders” of two very different generations—the geeks (those 21-35) and the geezers (those over 70).
Read More »Growing In Old Age
We have a gnarled, ancient plum tree in our backyard that has seen better days. Its bark is dark and creased with age, its limbs are sparse and spindly, and it leans about 45 degrees to the west. Two years ago I had to cut off some branches on one side and the tree lost its symmetry.
Read More »A Wish For The Aged
“As a white candle in a holy place, so is the beauty of an aged face.” This line from a poem by Joseph Campbell applies to people who have served the Lord all their lives and are still bearing fruit in old age.
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