Ministers' Page


Another birthday passed for me at the end of January and I’m now well and truly into middle age. Things I used to be able to do with little or no difficulty now seem to involve a lot of energy which isn’t always easy to summon up. Parts of my body which once moved with effortless ease now creak and click in alarming ways. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be (although as I’ve worn glasses since the age of 4, that isn’t saying a great deal!). I have to use some of the lower gears on my bike to get up Beacon Street on the way home. And the ground seems to be getting further and further away when it comes to lacing my shoes or picking up things which my increasingly clumsy fingers have dropped. But I know I’m not alone, as the following exchange proves.

A group of senior citizens was sitting around talking about their ailments. “My arms are so weak I can hardly hold this cup of coffee,” said one.

“Yes, I know. My cataracts are so bad I can't even see my coffee,” replied another.

“It has got to the point where I can’t hear anything anymore,” shouted one in the loudest voice of the group.

“I can't turn my head because of the arthritis in my neck,” said a fourth, to which several nodded weakly in agreement.

“My blood pressure pills make me dizzy,” claimed another.

Finally one man summed it up for the group: “I guess that's the price we pay for getting old. But thank the Lord we can all still drive!”

There’s always something to be thankful for, isn’t there? The older we get, the more memories we have to look back on, the more wisdom we have accumulated, the more people we have known, the more experiences we have enjoyed and learned from, the more opportunities we may have to sit and reflect. Life need not be so hectic as once it was. It’s a great shame that we live in a culture where the process of aging is seen as something to be arrested, disguised, denied. We spend an enormous amount of money trying to make ourselves look younger than we are. Many people will go to great lengths to ensure that no-one knows their age. There’s a sense that we cease to be useful once we have passed a certain age.

But some of the great characters of the Bible really only came into their own when they reached an age that we today would consider to be positively geriatric: Sarah gave birth when she was ninety, Moses was eighty when he led the people of Israel out of Egypt, Samuel did much of his great work when he was well on in years. And many of the people whose lives are described in the Bible are recorded as dying when they were “old and full of years”. I’ve always loved that expression – “old and full of years” – it does communicate something of a life well lived, a life full of wisdom and memories and experience.

As we are often being told, the population of Western Europe is getting older. More people are living to a great age, and they represent a greater proportion of the population. We really need to start getting used to it. Those who are younger can maybe show a little more respect, and learn from those who are older than they are. And those of us who are older can rejoice in the accumulated blessings of age and thank God that we are alive and still able to serve him – maybe not as energetically as once we did, but certainly as eagerly.



Rev Ian Hayter