Good morning church family,
I’ll be turning fifty-years-old next month and the whole thing has me feeling a little like a kid who’s riding his bike down a steep hill for the first time. The quickening descent catches me by surprise. My stomach’s a little queasy and my knees want to knock. Applying the brakes only makes it worse; putting a shimmy in the frame and setting the front wheel to wobbling. Any thought of veering off by turning the wheel would mean bailing head over handlebars. The only thing I know to do is to lean forward, tuck my head between the grips, and hold on for dear life; hoping everything will even out at the bottom.
It’s an odd thing to no longer be a “young” person. For me, the realization that I was entering the custodial class of human beings came on quite slowly. One of the first indications I had of my mortality came just days before my wedding to Lisa. Thirty-five at the time, I’d flown to Southern California a week before the ceremony to be sure I’d have enough time to get the marriage license, help with final arrangements, and confirm that the betrothal wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. While Lisa and I were in downtown Riverside to sign our names on dotted lines at the county courthouse and to pick up our programs at the printers, I spied a barber shop and decided I ought to get a quick haircut. The sole barber in the small shop was an old Mexican gentleman who didn’t speak much English. I spoke haltingly and mimed for him the sort of cut I was hoping he could give. He just nodded and smiled patiently as he shook out the linen barber cape; clearly unable to understand much of what I was saying. He ended up doing a great job but what I’ll never forget was what he said when he wheeled me around to face the mirror. I remember him flashing a toothy smile, tapping me on top of the head, and saying, “Very thin.” I met his eyes in the mirror and cocked my head sideways. “Hair,” he said, tapping my dome again, “losing it.”
That would be the first of many alarms to begin sounding in my subconscious; each one gently shaking me awake to the reality that my summer was not eternal but was every day giving way to fall. Of course, time and again I hit the snooze button on those alarms and tried to go back to sleep. But for some reason, over the last year I’ve become wide awake.
More and more, dear characters that God has written into the story of my life have taken their bow and left the stage. A number of things I always expected I’d one day do; I now realize are beyond me. A little back-of-the-envelope math has me realize that the aging professional athlete announcing his retirement is over a decade younger than I am. If it weren’t for one of my four pairs of reading glasses or three pairs of eyes belonging to my children, I wouldn’t be able to make out the fine print on packaging. I’m getting used to certain aches and pains and I’ve stopped wondering where all the snaps, crackles, and pops are coming from. Maybe most sobering of all, I hardly know any of the songs on Top 40 radio. Yes, my world’s getting smaller, my body funnier, and my way ever more narrow.
Some of you reading this may feel like slapping me around with the back of your hand and giving me a swift kick in the pants. “Come on, Pastor,” you’d say. “Snap out of it! You’re being melodramatic. You’re a young buck yet. Write this again in twenty years and maybe I’ll hear you out.”
Well, let me assure you, these ponderings are not born of either the blues or a morbid sentimentality. Nor is this pattern of thinking due to swooning health. No, I really believe it’s the Lord’s way of quickening within me a desire to make the most of every day. Enough of the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life,” as the Apostle John put it. It’s time I seize every conversation, surrender every fear, reach for everything beyond my grasp, and seek out new songs to sing every day. I’ve heard many a testimony of the Christian who wasn’t afraid to die. But it’s a rare word indeed to hear tale of the believer who wasn’t afraid to live.
My parents live across the street from a little cemetery. Whenever we drive over to Vermont to spend some time with them, the graveyard offers the best place for stretching our legs and taking walks. Every time I stroll among the stones; scanning the names and hyphenated histories, I’m sobered. Whatever petty grievances I was nursing, whatever silly thoughts I was entertaining, whatever lustful impulses I was looking to gratify – they’re all extinguished and left smoking like unfed campfires turned cold. It’s such a blessing to keep a cemetery in your soul.
But I’ll quit writing and leave you with a bit of King Solomon’s wisdom instead. “It is better,” he wrote, “to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter; for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools; this also is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2-6)
We’re looking forward to gathering together tomorrow morning to share in the great and grand work the Lord has commissioned us to do. What a blessing to partner together with the Lord in the transformation of lives and the redemption of the world – think of it! I’m looking forward to learning of all the Lord has in store for each of us. May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!
- Pastor Tate
