A very cynical person once said, “Youth is an illusion, adulthood a blunder, old age a regret.” Just because you have celebrated more than sixty-five birthdays doesn’t mean you have to be a perpetually unhappy person full of regrets. Senior adults who make the greatest impact on their world view the opportunity to keep on celebrating birthdays beyond their sixty-fifth with both gratitude and joy.
They don’t have to spend much time trying to avoid temptation – it avoids them. When they lean down to tie their shoes, they ask themselves, “Is there anything else I can do while I am down here.” Many of the senior men have worked their way through three hairstyles: un-parted, parted, and departed. Others are 42 around the chest, 48 around the waist, 100 around the golf course, and a nuisance around the house. They know they have lots of birthdays behind them, but they still want to celebrate many more. They have learned that the way to do that is to keep taking on new thoughts and throwing off old habits.
It is generally best to look at the years above 65 with humor. A gentleman in Florida on his one-hundredth birthday said, “If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” He knew that faith, seasoned with an ample supply of humor, can make your later years happy and productive.
I have noticed two basic types of people who have passed their sixty-fifth birthday:
Those who move us with a sense of PITY: They think of the calendar as a banker would a robber, as having stolen everything of value they owned. Their activities are narrowed, their faculties are dulled, and their face is long. Their get-up-and-go got up and went. They grumble and complain to anyone and everyone who will listen. The author of Ecclesiastes saw nothing in front of him but the blunting of pleasure, the dulling of sense, and the extinguishing of desire because, as he expressed it, “man goes to his long home.”
Those who move us to a sense of JOY: They may be frail and near-sighted like the first type, but they have an inward spring of happiness from which contentment leaps to everyone around them. They cannot walk as fast or see and hear as well as in prior years, their judgment is less prompt, their memory sometimes fails to supply a name quickly, but no one ever attaches to them the notion of impoverishment. Children and all healthy creatures are glad at their coming, for they have wisdom and strength to share. Their faith in God is the source which enables them to share their joy with others.
Dedicated senior adults have been to me both an example and a source of inspiration. The psalmist says of such persons, “The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon” (Psalm 92:12). The palm tree to which the righteous person is compared is the date palm. Fully grown, a palm tree can bear fruit every year for four hundred years. There is no more majestic sight in the desert wildernesses of the Middle East than to see an oasis with their date palms rising toward the sky with their diadem of leaves. They stay green all year long, constantly renewing themselves from their root system below.
The number of people in churches who have retired from serving the Lord is a needless tragedy. Senior adults have maturity and experience that those who are younger do not have. Moses and Aaron, who led the Children of Israel out of bondage toward the Promised Land, were 80 and 83. Joshua, who assumed the leadership following the death of Moses, continued to serve God until he was 110.
“In what way can I bear fruit?” you may ask. You can share your faith and experience with persons you know who are not Christians. You can, with God’s help, live a holy life. You can be a prayer warrior, lifting up those who are in positions of leadership. You can visit and be a friend to someone who has a need.
The Paper Pulpit 
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