Even though I will be 89 years old in September I had given no thought to being old until a little over a year ago when someone said to me, “Do you mean you can still drive at night?” Then, after a pause, he added “at your age!” There are people who know your age and are surprised you can still do certain things. Others know how old you are and say to you emphatically, “Don’t ever grow old!”
Two or three years ago I attended a lady’s birthday party that Sanford First Baptist Church was giving their oldest member. She had just passed her 100th birthday. During the course of the evening I was talking with another member of the church who happened to be 99. In the course of our conversation she said, “Preacher, I got my driver’s license renewed last week for five more years. I began wondering what it might be like to ride down the road in an automobile driven by a lady who only lacked a few months being 100.
It has been said that the only sure-fire formula for living to be 100 is to keep breathing! Regardless of our age, most of us are not nearly as old we hope to be. The important thing is not how many years we live but how well we live the years we are given. The right way to grow old, of course, is to grow old gracefully. Just remember this: We don’t stop laughing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop laughing.
Perhaps someone, thinking it was good advice, has said to you, “Don’t grow old!” Those who view old age to be frightening and humiliating may think this is good advice. Let us examine it more closely:
It is impossible advice. You and I can do many things, but there is one thing we can’t do – stop the years from marching on. We can be careful and wise in exercise, in our diet, in our spiritual intake, and in our social involvements, but we cannot halt the aging process. From the moment we are born we start aging.
It is bad advice. When we are told to do something that is impossible it is nearly always bad advice. It leads to frustration and to all kinds of unanticipated problems. When we see someone trying to stay young – using huge amounts of cosmetics and other disguises to conceal the fact that they have used up a huge number of calendars, it is embarrassing. To accept things as they are without resigning to premature old age is wisdom. It is possible for us, with God’s help, to make our current age a tremendous time to live.
It is mistaken advice. Robert Browning lived before any of us were born, but his best known lines may well have been these:
“Grow old with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God:
See all nor be afraid!’”
The Paper Pulpit 
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