Orig.10/21/2010
"You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath." Psalm 39: 5
I am half way done with my life-maybe. Since members in my family seem to live into the upper 80’s and 90’s it is probably fairly accurate to assume, withholding tragedy, I will live up to about 85-95 years old.
Life is short.
The scenes, smells, sites, and songs from my youth are as lucid today as they ever were and I “feel” as young as when I was in my teens. But reality hits in the form of our recent Guys Retreat when I came home with a twisted knee, pulled oblique muscle (James thinks it was a floating rib) and sore hamstring from a recent football season pull. All of this happened while playing wiffle ball and basketball with the teens! Man, can I ever relate to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:13 when he wrote, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” My spirit is as young and alive as it ever was but my chronological clock has reached its apex and is slowly beginning to descend.
There is tension men experience between an aging body and a renewing spirit. Our spirits grow as we mature in Christ as our bodies diminish. Maybe that is why wisdom is desperately needed to overcome what our body’s lack.
At one point during our freshman football season three out of four of us (coaches) had some kind of muscle pull or tear from practice! Life is merciless. Aging sucks! Because I can no longer get up at 4:30 and work until 10:30 six days a week I have become better at rallying a team around my aging mission.
I am at half-time in this game of life-possibly in the third quarter.
As I reflect on this passage one question I ask of my life is, “How will I run the second half with more effectiveness?” How can I be more strategic and wise in the second half? How can I adjust my dreams to a growing spirit in the midst of a diminishing body?”
God’s men must ask, “How can we fulfill God’s purposes?” The more men live under the tension between spiritually maturing and physically diminishing the more men need God’s agenda to drive us. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11).” We need God’s agenda more than ever since we cannot adjust our fire as readily as in our youth. Furthermore, the older we become and the more people depend on us, the more our lapses in judgment have greater consequence and effect more lives.
Age has a way of showing the ceiling of our lives. We see the end of the clock. We realize (that knee really hurts today) that we are not invincible. We feel the age in our bones. Our dreams tend to fall, the fire has a tendency to diminish, and the options become fewer as we age.
But all is not lost. We must use our age-given wisdom (hopefully) to make wise choices-choices that will effect how quickly our fading second half looks. As we exhale the breath of life in the second half, God gifts His men with experiences and wisdom to fight an even more effective fight in the second half. Just as youth and strength were our brothers in the first half of life, maturity and wisdom are a man’s greatest weapons in the second half. Use them.
