It doesn’t matter how old you are, we all go through seasons where we feel that getting older is an enemy of opportunity – the best is somehow providentially reserved for the young. I no longer believe that. I don’t think God is hung up with our age, as we sometimes are. More and more I am realizing that God does not solely reserve His best ideas, creativity and abilities for the younger generation. I am certain they are available to anyone passionate and faithful to bring it to their generation and those to come. It’s about His purposes being fulfilled, and we each have a small part in it. Having a right mind when it comes to how we think about life and aging becomes very important, at least it is to me. I want to be faithful to serve God with a youthful heart.
Psalm 103:5 HCSB “He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!
I found this poem that has really inspired me to think differently. It was penned many years ago by Samuel Ullman. Thought you might enjoy it too…
Youth
“Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.”
