Car Wisdom

Long trips generally result in thoughts. Some good, others pointless, some distracting. Here's one.

We are scared to age because we spend our lives building ourselves up, to know more, be skilled at more things, to look a certain way and to not rely on anyone (except maybe the one we choose). Age makes us un-able, our bodies decay and we have less control over them. We are less able to develop new skills, and our old skills are sometimes outside of our ability range. We forget the things we knew and sometimes become untrained in the self controlled and charismatic tongue that made us likable in the past.

If we look at how God has designed the body of Christ to be, it is clear that we don’t grow too old for his church.

“You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” (Titus 2:1-5)

There is a place and plan for us as we age. We spend a lifetime trying to be wiser, healthier, humbler, more elite, skilled…but if we take Gods image of the body seriously we will see that it is not these things that make us eligible.

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:4-6)

We are made eligible by the spirit, the same spirit we had when we are first brought into the kingdom, that one God is the God of our young and able bodies, just as he is God over our ageing, helpless ones. If there is a place for us in the kingdom, despite the decay of our charismatic and virtuous abilities, then it must not be these things that are worth putting our hope in.