Tag: Aging

Declining to Our Physical Departure

Aging can bring physical decline and loss, leading to a struggle with self-identity and health. Yet, faith in God provides hope. Through Jesus Christ, believers can embrace eternal life beyond death. This perspective encourages acceptance of life’s purposes, focusing on the glory promised in Heaven, making the aging process less daunting.

Nobody likes aging. It doesn’t hit you that this is your problem until usually your 30’s (a little) and with every decade that passes it gets worse. When our physical decline results in actual loss, we struggle to cope. It seems that suddenly we cannot eat like we used to without consequence. We used to be so attractive and now we are attractive “for our age”, which is often the same as not attractive. Eventually we cannot run without pain. We forget stuff. We can’t sleep or we sleep all the time. We are no longer competent to drive. We are no longer safe to live independently. It is a dark decline.

I would like to give you a little perspective that I hope helps. We are created to be eternal creatures. Our bodies age, decline and die; but that is because of “sin”. I’m not saying that we would necessarily live longer or healthier if we behaved better. I am saying that we are all genetically altered from the way God originally created human beings. The result is that our current bodies must die. This would create a hopeless situation for us if not for the fact that God wants us to have eternal life with Him, and has done something about it.

Jesus Christ is God’s Son who became human for a very specific purpose. He kept God’s Law perfectly, which is what God requires for people who would be with Him eternally. He also absorbed the worst consequence of sin on the cross. He was forsaken by His father, which would be our fate. Now we can be “connected” to Jesus through God creating faith in us and Jesus “baptizing us into His death”. That phrase means that God creates some sort of “supernatural” connection to us where Jesus’ life and Jesus’ death are ours. When we are “in Christ” the only thing left for us to do is to go through physical death. The rest of the way to a glorious, happy, eternal existence has been given as a gift from Jesus.

With that as a backdrop, declining toward death shouldn’t have to be so bad. Yes, it still hurts. Yes, you feel loss. But you are heading toward something great. This impacts certain decisions and attitudes.

First, if you are facing any challenge, especially a medical challenge, you can tell yourself that it is only temporary and if it ends in death, you will actually gain from it.

You don’t have to insist that the medical community do everything possible to keep you alive. Your goal is to naturally die. Their efforts would probably only give you an extended painful, useless, modest extension on this life. You don’t even want that.

Rather than be always looking back at the “good old days”, you can be forward thinking toward the glory of what God has prepared for you in Heaven and ultimately also a New Earth.

You can understand your purpose in life as something that is dynamic but always God-given. When you retire, you move from one purpose to another that is God-given. As you lose independence, you may lose one purpose but acquire another. Life is for accomplishing whatever God has prepared for you and then you get to experience real life.

This is hard to embrace, but when you study what God has promised us you develop a genuine excitement for it. That is what this blog is all about. My life matters, my aging and decline matters, and my passing away matters. I am heading toward an increasing glory.

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

5 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 Corinthians 4:16-5:1 (ESV)

The Necessity of Illness and Death

The author reflects on aging, acknowledging physical decline while emphasizing that illness and death are consequences of sin, not a lack of faith. They argue that healing is sometimes granted by God, and that life’s purpose is to serve until death, leading to eternal life with Christ. Acceptance of this reality brings hope.

I am getting older. The number of years that I have lived doesn’t really bother me. Age is just a number they say. I would also say that I look pretty good for my age. I wish I didn’t need the qualifier at the end of that sentence though. The real problem is that things don’t work like they used to. Parts of me are very much acting their age. That can be very discouraging.

There is a stream of thought among Christians, usually Evangelicals, that says God doesn’t want us to be ill. If you only have enough faith, you will be well. I must disagree. Jesus healed people out of mercy, but also as a sign. He did not eliminate illness in Palestine at His time. The word “healed” gets used in Scripture, but not exclusively about physical illness.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:5 (ESV)

This is the most famous incidence and in context it is talking about healing from our sins, not getting rid of disease.

Illness and death are the products of sin and the curse. Even when you are forgiven of your sins through the death of Jesus, the “temporal” consequences of sin remain. Jesus spares us from the worst part, the eternal consequences of sin. The proof is in the pudding. Does not every Christian get old and die? That is not a lack of faith. It is the way it works under the curse.

God will on occasion respond to prayer and change the course of cause and effect in our lives. He can and does provide healing of disease either through “means” like medicine and the like, or miraculously (breaking the Laws of Physics). This is done with purpose. The benefactor has something they need to do.

It helps to understand, however, that one of the goals of our lives here is to physically break down far enough that we physically die. At that point, we can inherit a heavenly body and be with Christ. It is our job to be good stewards of the earthly body we possess and to serve the Lord here as long as He gives us. We should not “cut the corner” and purposely undermine our health. But understand where you are headed and why. It is unlikely that you will leave this Earth like Elijah in a fiery chariot.

Accepting this fact makes it easier to cope with aging and illness. This all stands on the forgiveness God gives us through Christ and the promise of eternal life as I have described in the articles of this blog. If we are not connected to Christ and headed for Sheol and ultimately Hell, then this is no comfort at all.

Confident in God’s grace to me, I can accept that at some point I will not be able to carry out the duties of being a pastor. I can retire and my purpose will change. I will still look to show love to people, share the Gospel when I can, encourage others in their faith. At some point, I may be restricted to a nursing facility (hopefully because of my body and not my brain). I will seek to care for and witness to the people there. If I become even more impaired, I will seek to pray and praise God. Hopefully, soon after that I can depart.

Is that morbid thinking? No! That is realistic and forward thinking that includes real hope. I have a plan. I am not living in denial. Denial is a lousy strategy.

Maybe I can remain high functioning until almost my departure date. That is my hope. I will do what I can to make that happen. But in the end you don’t get to choose. You can keep looking past death to the goal. God has provided for our best days to be the last. There is a brilliant eternity to look forward to thanks to Jesus!