Growing Older Means Growing Closer

I was showing my grandsons pictures from Kenya the other day this picture popped up. This is a younger version of myself with one of my favorite people in the world, Geoffrey. Geoffrey was a pastor from Mt. Elgon. He had suffered much and yet never lost the joy of the Lord. Hardship had added age to his body…he was that much older than me, but he was an incredible man who is now with Jesus.

A video popped up on my Facebook feed, it was a young Neil Young singing, “Old Man.” As I watched it, I was struck by the fact that the young man singing to the old man grew old…the Young was not so young, but as a young man he said,

“Old man, look at my life

I’m a lot like you were

Old man, look at my life

I’m a lot like you were…”

Supposedly, he wrote the song about Louis Avila, the foreman of a ranch he had just bought. Google’s AI says, “It explores the common ground between generations, emphasizing that young people possess similar needs for love and life, regardless of age.”

I have found that to be true, but it is rare that a young man thinks about it.

I’m not an expert in Neil Young, as a southern boy I knew him more from Lynard Skynard’s song, but I do love his reflection more as an older man.

I got to thinking about growing old and two things came across my computer this week. First the end of “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock,” TS Eliot says,

“I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”

And then Fleetwood Mac in their song, “Landslide” said,

“Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too…”

We all start young and as Wendell Berry said in Jayber Crow, as young people we have no memory and nothing but time, but as we get older we find that we have all memory and no time. We get old and while the world encourages us to spend a fortune on looking young, I love what the Word of God says,

“The glory of young men is their strength, gray hard is the splendor of the old.”

I think of getting older a lot more now…not so much because I just turned 60, but because Kim and I have both buried our mothers, we have buried many of our aunts and uncles, and we are watching the impact of age on our fathers.

Paul said,

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 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.”

I find a lot of comfort in those words. The aches, the pains, the snaps, the crackles, and the pops every single morning are just a sign that I am moving toward Heaven and that this world is not my home. I love the words of D.A. Carson, “I’m not suffering from anything that a good resurrection can’t fix.”

Think about that and enjoy the fact that the older we get the closer we get to Him!