Print or Email

TheDiscipleMD

Several years ago I was in charge of our a church youth softball tournament. It is always enjoyable to play but that year was made more so by having a local church leader participate. He and I are old teammates from many years ago and share a love of the game. The next week he sent me over a quick email expressing his thanks and enjoyment of the games we played that day. I responded to him, among other things, by writing that “…it is good that old horses, like us, strap on the leather now and then to show the rising generation, that despite our diminishing skills, we can still pull the wagon!”

As you age you are constantly coming and going out of others lives. Unless you have known someone for a long time your perspective of Someone is based upon today, not yesterday. I know that in my younger years I didn’t fully appreciate the past service of older members.

My limited experience on aging brought to mind something my father said to me many years ago while I was serving in priesthood leadership. He said, “Don’t forget those that have labored in the noonday sun long before you came”,  or words to that effect.

I have tried to be better in remembering the service of those that have gone before us. A while back I attended the funeral of a sister who was into her nineties. I had never known her in her “younger” years. She has always been “an old woman” to me with her later years being spent in a nursing home. Often she was not all there in mind! A preacher spoke at her funeral who was from another church. She had been a long time member prior to joining ours. He reminisced about how much service this good sister had done for the congregation. As I sat in the pew, I tried to envision this elderly sister as a vibrant young mother who had served so well the members of that church. I thought how sad it was that I never knew that part of her life. Perhaps I would have ministered more fervently to her if I could have known the “whole” person.

So, I would encourage all of us to “broaden” our vision of others. We pass through others lives and so often, we don’t really know who they are, or were, or who they will become. Let us appreciate all those we know. There is so much more to each of us than meets the eye! Young horses do grow old and sometimes they are put out to pasture. But, they never die, they just fade away like old soldiers. (General Douglas MacArthur) And that is the way of the Lord. The glory and the honor is to Him!