Recovering with Resilience
A message for Seniors Grandparents and Community Relations Day
Ethos (To attract attention and awaken the need)
When we’re born, it’s as if—like an infant Moses—we too find ourselves adrift in a basket, but ours is carried immediately downstream in a swiftly moving river.
That river, life, moves in one direction only, and as time passes, we grow from infancy to childhood, from adolescence to young adulthood, from mid-life to the so-called “golden years.”
So the young man who felt pride in finally being able to shave now struggles just to keep the hair he has. The slender yet muscular and youthful physique, virtually effortless to maintain, has now betrayed him. His waistline no longer cooperates. His strength and stamina increasingly go into hiding when most needed.
The young woman who, without even trying, enjoyed a natural radiance, with smooth skin and unbounded energy, now mourns the growing network of wrinkles and lines on her face, the changing shape of her body as gravity pulls it relentlessly in the direction of the ground on which she walks.
“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them’—before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim; when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets.”
(Ecclesiastes 12:1–5)
• Decreased coordination (trembling)
v. 3
• Deteriorating posture (stooping)
v. 3
• Dwindling number of teeth
v. 3
• Dimmed eyesight
v. 3
• Dulled hearing
v. 4
• Difficulty sleeping
v. 4
• Declining ability to protect
v. 5
• Depleted hair pigment (white blossoms meaning white hair)
v. 5
• Drained energy
v. 5
• Diminished sexual drive
v. 5
Logos (Presenting the satisfaction or Solution, Visualizing change)
Titus was likewise to teach the older women to behave reverently, in a way suitable to sound doctrine. They were not to be slanderers (cf. 1 Tim. 3:11) or addicted to much wine (cf. 1 Tim. 3:8).
The first thing that older women are to be is ‘reverent in the way that they live’. The word translated ‘reverent’ occurs only here in the New Testament. The basic idea is that of ‘conduct appropriate to a temple’ and suggests that older women are to behave in ways befitting those who are servants of God. Others may please themselves in the way that they live and recognize no higher authority than their own wills. Older Christian women are to be different. It is to be apparent from the way they live that their lives are dedicated to God.