July 29, 2020 – Click here to listen
I was reminded of the title of an old song, I fall to pieces, this week, only I’m not falling to pieces over some gal, but from getting old. I had to get two epidurals in my back because my L3, L4, and L5 are essentially shot. My sciatic nerve has been letting me know where it is with constant pain in my leg.
Today I go to a retina specialist because they found blood behind it and if left unchecked could cause retinal detachment. I see flashes of light similar to lightning when I walk down a dark hall.
A friend was telling me the other day that I had lived so hard in my life that I have used up three bodies and I was bound to run out of them sooner or later. Another told me I’d been rode hard and hung up wet. Thanks fellas, – mighty compassionate of you to say such things . . .
My wife got into the act last night when I had to take her to the emergency room for pains in her legs reminiscent of her recent bout with blood clots and pulmonary embolisms. Fortunately they did not find any clots and her lungs were clear.
Yes, we are getting old and it ain’t always easy, which the Bible predicts in Eccl.12: Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them, before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed . . . Now old King Solomon had a rather cynical look at growing old because he focused on the flesh and the here and now.
The Apostle Paul had a much brighter perspective in 2 Cor 4:16 focusing on God – So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
And in Psalm 92:12 David wrote – The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
My personal favorite verse concerning getting old and ultimately succumbing to it is as bright and cheerful as the morning sun. I prefer to dwell on such things as opposed to my aches and getting old pains in this world with all of its problems. Follow the path of righteousness in life my friends. Follow Jesus Christ and not the world. As the Reverend Billy Graham said on many occasions, The thing that surprises me the most in life is its brevity. Be a long term thinker as in eternal thinking versus the here and now. A time when you have a new glorified body that will not fall to pieces . . .
Proverbs 12:28
In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death.