Old Age

 Retirement and old age can be a curse. Are you full or regrets over your failures and bad choices? You can look back at so many mistakes in your life. You wish you had made better decisions. What would have happened if …

You can look at the horrible things people had done that hurt you. You wish you had not allowed this or that person to dominate you and rob you of your independent thinking.

I saw my father in his eighties, as his health and his intellectual brilliance deteriorated. He went to bookshops and bought piles of books that he would never read. He so much wanted to keep thinking, although he knew his brain was ageing and his mind was fading and failing.

He progressively slipped into despair, just waiting to die and disappear into nothingness.
But old age can also be a time to rethink, to reconsider, to be open to another dimension.

As my father became helpless and bedridden, he could not read or watch television, but there was an openness to something he had pushed away from his mind when he was mentally and physically able.

My wife and I asked him if we could read the bible to him. He was happy to listen. We would read a chapter to him and ask him if that was enough. As time went by, he even asked to hear more.
Then there came a time when he was happy for us to pray for him.

Eventually he was 88 and my wife asked him if he would like to believe in Jesus and make peace with God. She prayed for him and he squeezed her hand. From that day he was never the same again. The black cloud of despair left him.

I talked to him about his mother and brother who were already in heaven. I told him they were waiting to see him again. Now he listened with positive expectation. Eventually my father died in peace at the age of 91.

Never stop praying for your loved ones. Many people in old age become more difficult, more irritable, more negative, but that does not have to be the end of the story.

Death can be a dreaded departure into darkness, or it can be a wonderful release into a better world with a good God.

I am now 75. Every year is a year closer to heaven. I am learning to let go of negative attitudes that I learned in past years. I am learning to be more tolerant, less critical, less judgemental, although that it still often a challenge.

Old age can be a time of hardening or a time of softening, a time of resignation, or a time of learning and teaching others with the wisdom of reflection.

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; Eccesiastes 3:1–2 NKJV