Sermon Tone Analysis

Aging with Grace in the LORD!

It is happening to us all - we are all getting older.

It’s kind of interesting that growing up is taking longer than it used - with our youth emerging as adults not in their late teens as much as their twenties.

Aging is taking longer too because we are living much longer than a century ago.

Both stages of life - emerging adulthood and end-of-(earthly) life, are full of so much change.

For emerging adults that change can be paralyzing and scary, but is still largely hopeful and exciting, for the “golden” years, so many of those changes are expected and even dreaded, a slow letting go of abilities and freedoms.

From time to time it is good take a step back and ask who am I becoming in this stage of life, what am I called to do and be for the Lord and for those around me.

And one of the most comforting verses on aging for young adult, senior or for those caught in the middle is

We don’t have to face the changes of any stage of life alone and we need our LORD not only to guide but also to carry us.

I had read books on dying before, but never one on aging.

Then I read J.I. Packer’s Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance for Engaging our Aging.

I read it mostly because someone looking back, said, “I wish I had read that when I was 40!”

Packer had suffered a head injury in his childhood, and ended up hanging up sports equipment, trading it in so to speak for a typewriter.

After a life of evangelical Christians around the world, of writing many helpful books - he is now going blind and can no longer - but he still finds such purpose and calling in life.

He speaks against the idea of retirement applied to Christian living, but has such wise counsel about the need to live within new limitations and to adjust our pace.

Now as my parents enter the upper eighties, my siblings and I are hoping to walk with him in a helpful way.

Though no decisions are upon us yet, beginning these conversations are hard.

Many in our congregation are also living vibrantly and faithfully into the twilight years.

But their is much spiritual, emotional, psychological, financial, and physical stress that comes with this territory.

A recently published book by a seasoned medical doctor has come ought that we are putting in our church library: Finishing Well to the Glory of God: Strategies from a Christian physician.

One thing I really love about our Covenant church family here, is how seniors make an effort to get to know, and keep update with a couple youth in our congregation.

Personally I need to say thank you to some who hve done that with our emerging adults.

But that was also pretty neat this year when the youth group arranged a games night with our seniors.

Read and see how a church family is to have the different generations interacting and learning and supporitng one nanother.

Picture a home where not only parents and children oare living, but grand ma & pa, and even great grand children are all under one roof and rubbing shoulders.

Those relationshsip are to be in our church too.

I see the joy in seniors faces when they track a youth in our church.

I also see a deep love of our youth for seniors.

It used to be that a whole community showed up for funerals.

A town’s life would pause if only for the fuenral coach to go by.

In this comunity of faith, we still have opprontuity to support each other and learn from each other - as the Lord guides and carries us together.

Let’s give thanks for the multi-generational family of God here, but let us not retire from serving the Lord in those relationshisp.

Let us enter into each other’s lives deeply.

Shalom, Pastor Harry