THE PRAYER OF
THE ELDERLY
Can
a believer grow old gracefully?
An elderly gentleman I came to know
at Crestview (my first pastorate) had open-heart surgery and found his
lifestyle changed dramatically by it. Shortly thereafter his wife began to show
signs of Alzheimer’s disease and eventually passed away from the illness. To
top it off, this gentleman was estranged from his son due to family issues.
Frank’s response to all of this was,
“If these are golden years you can have them.”
This past week I rushed to Winnipeg
to be with my mother who had called 911 in the middle of the night. While at
the hospital she had fallen, adding to her pain and predicament. When I saw her
walking in a stooped and painful manner, I realized how tough Leukemia had been
on her body and spirit.
Growing old is a difficult journey.
Eyesight, hearing, and memory are but a few of the losses one experiences in
the senior years. Friends start to pass away one by one; spouses grow ill and
die. Usefulness in these later years appears to wane as our elders struggle to
find a place in the home and the church.
Can a believer grow old gracefully
in the midst of these challenges? What should be our attitude and prayer
concerning the elderly and our own fleeting youthfulness?
I want to speak hope into the lives
of you seniors and encourage you with these words from Psalm 71. But I also
speak to those who are young. When you are 15 you think you are going to live
forever and be invincible. The truth is that the next 15 years are going to fly
by, and the next 15 are even faster than that. Before you know it, you are
young in mind but not so much in the body.
The prayer of Psalm 71 is the prayer
of an elderly believer who pleads with God to make his senior years count. It
is a prayer to grow old gracefully in this final chapter of life.
1.
Let me confess your faithfulness O God
Some
say this is a Psalm of old king David. I’m not sure; it doesn’t say. Let’s
assume it is a Psalm of David.
As an old man, David prays that God
would do essentially five things for him. The first is a plea to let him confess
that God is faithful.
Who is he confessing this truth to?
God! I find myself doing this all the time: telling God things he already
knows. Why do I do it? Because I need to confess with my own mouth that God is
faithful and in that way agree with God that he is able to do what he says he
can do.
David is facing some sort of
trouble. So in his prayer he rehearses the fact that God has been faithful to
him all his life. He says, “For you have
been my hope, Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth,” (5). What is
this confidence? That God has been steady and faithful like a rock all these
years. David says that God has been his rock of refuge, his fortress, his
deliverer, and his rescuer.
A rock is unchanging; a fortress is
a symbol of power. When David had troubles he found that God was always there
for him and he could hide in the presence of God for safety. Now as David
recognizes his vulnerability once again, he allows that vulnerability to drive
him back under the shelter of God’s strength and into the fortress of God’s
protection.
This is a testimony of an elderly
man’s lifelong experience with God. “From
birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb. I will
ever praise you,” (6).
As an octogenarian looks back on his
or her life, they can see time after time how God has been faithful. This is a
testimony we need to hear as younger people. It is a reminder that God walks
with us through all of life. The testimony of an elder bears more weight in
some ways than a teenager who has yet to go through the toughest times. The
young person’s story is just beginning; the older is finishing and has much to
offer.
2.
Let me be useful in my later years O God
David
then prays, “Do not cast me away when I
am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone,” (9).
David’s enemies apparently saw the
aged king and said, “His God is done with him…His God won’t deliver him. David
is old, forgotten and vulnerable because his God has abandoned him.”
Why would they say this? Probably
because that culture is much like ours. They were echoing the cultural notion
of that day that the aged serve no purpose; they contribute nothing meaningful
to society; they are a burden and a nuisance.
Our culture is not much different.
The prevalent message from our media is that youth is valued while growing old
is to be despised and held off as long as possible. This is so wrong.
Today’s enemies of the elderly
include their own thoughts. I am no longer needed; the church has no place for
seniors; I am too old for service. I can see how an elderly person would
translate that into how God feels about them.
Old age robs us of personal beauty,
and deprives us of strength for active service; but it does not lower us in the
love and favor of God. His love is like that rock; unchanging.
Let me be useful in my later years O
God, is David’s prayer. Let me continue to pursue your heart.
John Piper wrote, “When I heard J.
Oswald Sanders at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School chapel speaking at
the age of 89 say that he had written a book a year for Christ since he was 70,
everything in me said, “O God, don’t let me waste my final years! Don’t let me
buy the American dream of retirement—month after month of leisure and play and
hobbies and putzing around in the garage and rearranging the furniture and
golfing and fishing and sitting and watching television. Lord, please have
mercy on me. Spare me this curse.”
3.
Let me tell others about you O God
Maybe
you won’t write books like Oswald Sanders but you have years of experience and
stories to tell about God. And the church needs to hear that God is faithful.
David prayed, “My mouth will tell of your
righteous deeds, of your saving acts all day long – though I know not how to relate them all. I will proclaim your mighty acts, Sovereign
LORD; I will proclaim your righteous
deeds, yours alone. Since my youth, God you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds,”
(15-17).
These deeds are not some recitation
of Bible stories or theological truths; these acts of God are something that
David experienced personally. And here we see that David is compelled to tell,
relate, proclaim and declare what God has done in his life. That is his job as
an elderly person in the congregation of the believers.
This is the job of our seniors –
this is a significant role in the church. You are the ones who, like David,
testify to God’s ability to help his people in all kinds of situations: the
Depression, the War years, the revival years, through illness and marital
troubles and family crises. You’ve been there.
But here’s the challenge: Grampa
Simpson is ignored by his family because he tells them all the time how things
used to be, about the good old days, and how we need to go back. No, we need to
hear about God and his faithfulness, about his strength and power. Tell us how
God is utterly dependable. Praise God before us because the younger generation
needs to see that your God is still your God.
Paul’s truth is a truth for the
elderly, “…being confident of this, that
he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of
Christ Jesus,” (Phil 1:6). Seniors, do not withdraw. Do not believe the lie
that you have nothing to contribute to the church. You are as much proclaimers
of Jesus Christ as any person in the church young or old.
As David prayed, “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake
me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts
to all who are to come,” (18). Let me live long enough to tell the next
generation about you, Lord.
4.
Let me know your comfort O God
Two
things are apparent with growing old: One is that we look back and see all the
troubles we have faced in this life and realize that life is full of suffering.
Second, as we look ahead, we know that growing old will mean more suffering.
Our bodies will fail and we will die.
So David prays, “Though you have made me see troubles many and bitter, you will restore
my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You
will increase my honor and comfort me once more,” (20-21).
There was an elderly woman who was a
true saint of God in her long life of devotion. She knew much of the Bible by
heart and would repeat long passages from memory. But as the years went by, the
strength went and with it the memory gradually went too. Finally, there came
the time when she was able only to quote one passage: "I know whom I have
believed, and am persuaded that he is able, to keep that which I have
committed, unto him against that day." But by and by that also seemed to
slip. So there came a time when all she could say was "...that which I
have committed to him..." But toward the last, as she hovered between this
world and the next, her memory failed even more. Her loved ones would see her
lips moving and, thinking that she might need something, they would bend down
and listen for her request. Time and again they found her repeating only one
word from this song over and over and over. It was the same word: "HIM!
HIM! HIM!" She had lost the whole song -- she had lost the entire Bible --
with the single exception of this one word. And what a word it is! She had
capsulated the entire Bible in this one word! The Bible is "HIM."
This "HIM" is Jesus.
Let me know your comfort O God, as
my memory fades and my body fails. If I forget everything I ever knew let me
remember only Jesus.
5.
Let me praise you in my twilight O God
As
David closes his prayer he ends on a high note. He wants to praise God with his
last breaths because, as we have seen, David recognizes the hand of God in his
life from birth until now.
He uses the word “praise” three
times, twice as one who sings praise, and says that his “lips will shout for
joy.” There is a strong emphasis on giving God credit for his faithfulness and
deliverance. David knows, even before he is rescued from whatever trials he is
facing that God will yet again deliver him. “My
tongue will tell of your righteous acts all day long, for those wanted to harm
me have been put to shame and confusion,” (24).
Can this not apply to our present
enemies, the enemies of our life and vitality?
It is well known that John Koop is
losing his memory. He has said that his prayer is that he will be a “happy
forgetter.” That is the attitude David talks about.
I have a tendency to be a bit of a
crank myself. My hope is that as I get older I will be praising God when people
ask how I am.
That attitude of praise must start
now. This is why younger people need to listen to this now so that when age
creeps up on us we will already be practicing the art of praising God no matter
the circumstances.
Paul in one of his final letters
spoke of attitude in the face of trials and even death when he said, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is
gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for
me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire
to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary
for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will
continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that
through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on
account of me,” (Phil 1:21-26).
Now that is a clear purpose for an
elderly person. To say, I am here for you so that you can grow in Christ, is
clearly why God has blessed His church with elderly men and women. Praise God
for you!
Our
culture has taught us an error: seniors are not a waste of space. Scripture
tells us the opposite. We are told in the OT, “Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and
revere your God. I am the LORD,” (Lev. 19:32).
John Piper commented on this verse
saying, “How? Respectful postures. Respectful forms of address. Respectful
deference in sitting and standing. Respectful clothing. These are not just
arbitrary, old fashioned manners and customs. The text says, "Honor the
face of an old man, and fear your God." Customs of respect and deference
to older people are rooted in God and the fear of God. And the loss of these
manners of respect from baby-boomers and teenagers is directly related to their
small view of God and the contemporary foreignness of the idea of the fear of
God. If God has become a buddy, you can hardly expect people to stand when an
old man enters the room.
So we must learn to fear the Lord in
humility and trust, and then to let that trust and humility and fear show itself
in respect and honor for the people the Lord has made to bear his image a long
time on the earth. This is what I mean when I say, Older people are to be
PRIZED.”[i]
The five points I have made about
the prayer of an elderly believer are just a beginning point for growing old
gracefully. I know that one sermon does not take away the pain and frustration
of growing older. However, we do want to break old stereotypes and begin a
process of inclusion and respect when it comes to our experienced members. May
God show us how to grow old gracefully and to revere the veterans of our faith.
AMEN
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