Aging Gracefully

Within each of us exists the image of God, however disfigured and corrupted by sin it may presently be. God is able to recover this image through grace as we are conformed to Christ.  Alister McGrath

The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.  D.L. Moody

All of us have heard the terminology about aging gracefully.  I think we have a misconception about what it means to age gracefully.  The world sees aging gracefully from the perspective that if our eyes get laugh lines and our neck begins to resemble the forehead of a Shar Pei, we are not aging gracefully.  Why do we place so much importance on outer appearance instead of what is inside?  Society places an inordinate amount of importance on defying gravity and looking younger than we really are, but for what purpose? 

I was looking through a magazine this weekend and I saw a famous newscaster.   The problem was I didn’t recognize her.  I had to read the fine print to figure out who she was and she is not the only one.  How many actors, sports figures and other famous people don’t even resemble the person they were 20 years ago.  You see them all the time.  Their eyes resemble a deer in headlights with a perpetual surprised look on their faces. 

Some of the most beautiful people I have known in my lifetime were not wrinkle free.    Every wrinkle on my face should tell a story.  There are the wrinkles from surviving cancer, the wrinkles of laughing with my niece and nephews and the wrinkles of worrying about loved ones and just plain old stress wrinkles.  Each wrinkle is a badge of courage.  Some wrinkles are of our own making.  Smoking, alcohol and hard living can bring on the wrinkles too.   

When I think of aging, I think about God’s grace. Graceful aging should be the terminology we use.  God gave us unmerited or unearned grace so that we could live.  He didn’t intend for us to try to look the same age as we were when we were twenty.  When we decide to live for God we no longer need to worry about what others think of our wrinkled face.   

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, we often get caught up in the worldly habit of trying to look young.  I have started to see my wrinkles differently.  If I look at them from Your perspective, there will be times of suffering and times of great sorrow.  Age and gravity will pull at my face but if I look at my wrinkles from the standpoint that many of these signs of aging were wrought from trials that made me love You more, how can I not appreciate each tiny crease and fold.   

Scripture:  Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.  But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.  Romans 5:1-11