Older… We count the years. We expect. We dread.
We expect our children to roll over, then crawl, then walk… on and on the list goes as our babies get older. Then we dread the day they leave, even though we expect it…even pray for it.
We dread the years piling up on us, dread the aches and pains, the health issues, the wrinkles. Even though we expect to get old, even want to live to be very old, we dread.
We expect to take care of our children. We expect to take care of ourselves. But do we really do either?
In reality, without what God provides, we are utterly helpless.
“Listen to Me…you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He Who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you. I will sustain you and I will rescue you. To whom will you compare me or count me equal?” (Isa. 46:3-5)
We are deceived by Satan’s lies that we have any power at all. The only thing we have is choice.
And with that choice, we choose so poorly sometimes. We choose to ‘pour out gold …hire someone…make a god and lift it up on our shoulders and carry it…set it up where it stands and can’t move from that spot. Though we might cry out to it, it does not answer and can not save from any trouble.’ (vs. 6-7 my version)
I never want my trust to be in money. I don’t want to pour it out in any way, trying to buy what only God can really provide. There is no security outside of Him.
I never want my trust to be in any thing or any system. We set up all these ‘things’ that supposedly make us secure, or even things that supposedly make us ‘righteous’ or ‘saved’. Then we must sustain it, we must carry it as it gets heavier and heavier. No thing and no system can make one iota of difference in an eternal way. There is no security outside of Him.
As I get older I want to pray regularly with David… “O God, You have taught me from my youth….now when I am old and gray headed, Oh God, forsake me not until I have shown Your strength to this generation and Your power to every one that is to come….” (Ps. 71: 7-8)
I’m older than I was. But I am not as old as I want to be.
And I want to be more and more useful as I grow older. Not less.
I long to watch and count as my children grow older. And I expect to see God do mighty things in their lives and expect Him to work through them as they too grow older.
“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” (3John 1:4)
