October 28, 2021 – Click here to listen
Yesterday I went fishing and had a great time. Today when I awoke, I walked stiff-legged for my first twenty or so steps groaning like my old lab Bear did when he reached the ripe old age of 14. I was talking to one of my fishing buddies about growing old and I told him that when I was young, I couldn’t wait to get older, but this isn’t what I expected. He told me that I really wasn’t that old. I responded by asking if he would buy a car that had 500,000 miles on it, even if it wasn’t “that old”. “I have a lot of miles on me”, I smiled.
Some seem to fare better than others. I see people my age mountain climbing I’m lucky to get my leg through my underwear without losing my balance. My fishing buddies tell me I climb around on my boat like someone thirty years younger and one told me yesterday that I seem to come alive when I get on the water.
How so? I asked . He said that when we go out to eat or ride in a car to Key West to see a concert or something, I seem more subdued. I suppose it was a nice way of saying I’m boring doing the things I am not as passionate about. So, if I do the things I’m passionate about, like being forty miles offshore in the cobalt blue waters of the ocean fighting fish, I forget my aches and pains and the ills of the world and consider it fun.
Though I haven’t looked, I suspect today’s headlines in the news are disturbing and discouraging. Focusing on it just brings me down. It reminds me of focusing on all my cumulative aches and pains of old age and the evil in this world that is spreading like a malignant cancer, instead of the wonderful opportunities that are available. I don’t want to focus on my poor eyesight or hearing, or my bad back or skin cancer or Biden, I want to focus on watching a nice bull dolphin leaping in the air like I did yesterday.
I think it is the major difference between believers and non-believers. We, believers, have faith that the Bible is correct that God will destroy evil and thereby we have hope. Worry is a sin according to Jesus. It does nothing but harm to our being and I believe it is insulting to the Lord. Isn’t it a form of saying, I can’t trust you with this world Lord? The Bible states unequivocally that we win in the end. Patience my friends, Patience…
So if you observe that one minute you’re young and fun and the next, you’re turning down the car stereo to see better, don’t get in a panic, you are getting closer each day to having a body, (temple), that is not ancient and crumbling but glorified and shining brightly in a city with no tears, grief, sin, and politicians. Focus on that for your headline of the day.
Phil. 3:20
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.