Introduction
When one of my nephews was only a few years old, my grandfather, then in his 80s, looked at him and said, “I just wish I could watch him grow up.”
Now that I’m older I, too, am becoming more aware of aging and its effects. When you pastor in the mainline tradition, with predominantly older congregations, the realities of ministering in hospitals and hospices become part of the ethos of shepherding. I’ve been wondering lately: what is a theology of aging that we can integrate into our lives? Is there a place for a deeper awareness, if not a willingness to talk about aging in our communities of faith?
Folk singer Pete Seeger wrote “Turn, Turn, Turn,” made famous by The Byrds but inspired by Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven” (3:1). So, it would seem that if we are to formulate not a comprehensive theology but a pared-down practical theology of aging into our lives and into our faith communities, it may well be this familiar description of seasons.
Walking in the Seasons of Life
Most days I walk the loop through the cemetery of the First Reformed Church in Pompton Plains, N.J., where my wife Stacey is the Co-Pastor. I read the headstones, which tell a variety of stories. The oldest headstones, dating to the 1700’s when the church was founded, are no longer legible. The beginning of the loop, which is predominately 19th century and replete with many Dutch names, eventually gives way to a more inclusive community. The varied names make me wonder about their lives, their stories–especially of those who died young, whose bereft families I prayerfully ponder.
One September evening I took this picture:
The Holy Spirit began stirring this reflection that night—the leaves lying on the ground reminded me of the inevitable passage of time. They are markers, indicators–almost like hands of a clock—scattered on the ground. Their autumn color and splendor spoke of a predictability, a routine, an inevitability of the seasons of life and death.
When trees leaf out in spring, they’re green reminders of our own hope for new life, especially in the Northeastern U.S., when we can say “so long for now” to winter barrenness and cold. Those leaves, though, eventually “turn, turn, turn,” and return to the ground again. They shrivel. They’ll be mulched and composted, providing in death fertile ground for new life and new leaves. Creation is rich with examples of this aging, predictability, routine—and, yes, this inevitability.
Walking in the midst of a humid drizzle, I noticed, too, the surrounding backyards of houses, which also tell stories of time and aging. Some yards have playgrounds, some gardens, and others just neatly-cut lawns, each speaking of inhabitants who are young, middle-aged, or much older. The backyards of these homes, too, are indicators of different seasons and ages of life, which “turn, turn, turn,” to the ticking minute-hand of God’s creation.
Time for the Saints
The elder saints I minister to are bursting with wisdom. In spite of mobility and health challenges, when I visit they often end up ministering to me. Even with aching hips and knees or slower schedules, their stories are full of holiness and wisdom and contentment about aging through the seasons of life.
I remember once serving as a volunteer chaplain and speaking to a man who had been in and out of the hospital. He was somewhere in his 80’s—his Italian roots clearly present in his talk. I wish I could tell you his conversation was filled with joyful memories. Instead he started with how the love of his life was killed in a plane accident, not long after the moment she miscarried what would have been their first child. He then told me of a later relationship with a woman who didn’t want children and how, sadly, he’d never been a father. He lost his elderly mother and then his brother in an accident.
After recalling all those seasons, his eyes wading in tears, he said he was all alone, outside of two good neighbors who check-in on him. Nevertheless, through his tears he drew a powerful conclusion for both of us: he said he had a good life and was grateful to God for it, which I considered a brave, vulnerable theology of aging wrapped in gratitude.
Time for God
The psalmist says poignantly, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night” (Ps. 90:4). For God, time is so different from what it is for humans. We wonder today how the Israelites could wander for 40 years in the wilderness, but that’s such a finite amount of time for God, who can see past the present to a future we cannot see. Even the cemetery I walk through, which is old by U.S. standards, spanning several hundred years, must barely register on God’s metric of time.
When we talk about aging and the seasons passing by, we are in a sense talking about faith. Hebrews says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (11:1). Within the wilderness passages, where God gave God’s people manna each morning, God is teaching us to have faith in God’s daily provision–to build our faith on what God offers us in the present. In so doing, we travel toward the apex of the journey of faith that our older saints have figured out: a fertile summit garden blossoming with daily gratitude, watered by the faith gathered in and through the seasons.
Parting In Gratitude for Eternal Hope
Christian hope is rooted in anticipating what God has been doing through Jesus Christ. We live in expectation, wrapped in faith, secured through our Lord Jesus Christ’s grace-filled covenant. The Apostle Paul writes, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). We continue moving toward that which is unseen, for it is eternal. The seminal hymn Amazing Grace ends with a commentary on time rooted in this promise of the faith that declares a reality that shall be ours: praising God for eternity.
When we’ve been there 10,000 years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be: world without end, Amen, Amen.
