The Golden Years

I was sitting with her in the hospital. It hadn’t been too long before, that her husband had died of cancer, a long lingering episode. Now her health was failing. Bits and pieces at first. Aches here and pain there, until they jumbled together in a constant rhythm. ”So, much for the golden years, ” she said.

The Golden years ”The Third Age is now considered by many to be the “golden years” of adulthood. It is generally defined as the span of time between retirement and the beginning of age-imposed physical, emotional, and cognitive limitations, and today would roughly fall between the ages of 65 and 80+.”

It is a concept sold to us by an affluent society that believed it could forestall aging and cheat death. In first world countries, our lifespan has increased, but the golden years are hit and miss. For other countries, forget about it, the struggle for daily life is all-consuming. The fact is, you don’t even have to be in your senior year’s to have the golden years snatched out from under you.

• An expectation not met/disappointment – I believed God would heal my father, but he didn’t.

• A relationship gone bad/promise not kept – My spouse cheated on me, left me, is a workaholic.

• A lifestyle not accomplished/sense of insignificance – didn’t get the career I longed for and my job is meaningless.

• A future not realized/overwhelming hopelessness – I am all alone and each night I feel that no-one cares.

• A pain too great to bear/a God who doesn’t care, or maybe the God I’ve been told about. I can’t have children so how can a loving God give them to undeserving people and not me.

In his book, ”The Problem Of Pain, ” CS Lewis acutely makes the point of mains dilemma with the golden years, 

the creatures cause pain by being born and live by inflicting pain, and in pain, they mostly die. in the most complex of all the creatures, man, yet another quality appears, which we call reason, whereby he is enabled to foresee his own pain which henceforth is preceded with acute mental suffering and to foresee his own death while keenly desiring permanence. it also enables men by a hundred ingenious contrivances to inflict a great deal more pain than they otherwise could have done on one another and on the irrational creatures. this power they have exploited to the full. their history is largely a record of crime, war, disease, and terror, with just sufficient happiness interposed to give them, while it lasts, an agonized apprehension of losing it, and, when it is lost, the poignant misery of remembering. every now and then they improve their condition a little and what we call a civilization appears. but all civilizations pass away and, even while they remain, inflict peculiar sufferings of their own probably sufficient to outweigh what alleviations they may have brought to the normal pains of man.

 God, however, didn’t promise us golden years, he promised abundant life. For some, that sounds the same, but there is a vast difference. Golden years are rooted in the things of the world. Abundant life rests in the sufficiency of Jesus. In Christ, I see the world for how it is, sinful and decaying. In Christ I see compassion, and in grace help out those who are forgotten. In Christ grace is abundant, not overlooking sin, but to see it paid for and forgiven. In Christ, the Father’s Holiness condemns sin, but in Christ, we are more than conquers. In Christ, I endure the pain, the disappointment, the loss, and the unknown because my patience means salvation for others. Is it easy? Heaven’s, no, but the end of the story is magnificent. Move over golden years, give way for His glory years. I’m just saying…