Why We Fear To Grow Old

Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. Hos 7:9  

The Ugly and the Beautiful

A young beautiful woman saw a picture of an old woman splashed in a front page newspaper article. The old woman was black, gaunt, and her face was lined up with deep furrows. ‘Is that how I will look when I grow old?’ the young woman was aghast. She quickly turned her eyes from the offending picture and walked away in a huff. She never looked back again.

We live in a world, where our average age according to the Bible, is only threescore and ten. I wondered, if when she reaches there, will she still be running? 

Myself I spent my entire youth (18-37) running. But I didn’t know from what. Then one day the sky fell on my face and I had nowhere to run.

I was 38, in a City estate barber shop run by a chatty young fellow. A quarter of my head at the time was a scattered grey patch (by 30 I had already acquired my first speck of white).

The young man was enthusiastic, probably because I was his first customer that morning. I had with me a brown metal walking cane, the result of a recent case of a stroke. I placed my cane on the wall and dropped down on his seat. And that is when the rumble in the sky went off. ‘Habari ya mzee?’ (How are you old man?)

That was the first time I heard I was old. I flinched in pain but I didn’t show it. Cautiously I probed him further. ‘How old do you think I am?’

‘75’ he said without hesitation.

I swallowed and smiled. ‘Really?’

‘Yes sir!’ I stared at my face on the wall mirror, and obliquely, I wondered if the young man had not swallowed something hard that morning. Me, at 38, but looking 75? To me he sounded like Elihu, that imperious young friend of Job who spoke like a man. 

Next he asked how many children I had and I shocked him with the truth. But he didn’t believe. He insisted that I was married and that I had at least five children. I didn’t talk to him after that.

The Craving for Immortality

One reason why we fear to grow old is because we crave immortality. No one in his right mind believes he will die at seventy.

Another reason is that we cleave stubbornly to our childhood memories, and in a way, no one likes those to fade. In childhood life is awash with possibilities. Love beckons, laughter fills the air, and there are no thorns in sight.

But then we leave the nest. We throw ourselves headlong to start life ‘and be counted.’ The hard lessons begin immediately.

Suddenly we realize the sun does not shine brightly every day, and that flowers do wither. Love throws its arrows and it draws blood. And by midlife the thorns have started to pierce.

Life is a Climb

But who can discount our resilience? We get bruised alright but we fight on. We clear the thorns and dig afresh. We plant and wait, and life’s meaning is shrouded in the sky.

Like noon sunlight, the rays of disappointments, failures and victories merge and become one. But we emerge out of the valley finally. We begin to climb. And in a nutshell that is life. We are always climbing from birth.

The Treasury of David

We owe it to David, God’s poet, to mark down every feeling he has felt for us.

In Psalms, more than any other book, we are glutted with feelings – David’s raw, visceral and gut-wrenching feelings. In psalms we read the story of our hearts. ‘Thy gentleness hath made me great’, he sings, and we know it is true with us as it was with David.

In his old age David’s flesh was dead but not his mind. It was still climbing to a place we all aim at although we don’t see it.

David saw it. It was a place larger than his palace or his young virgin Abishag, the most beautiful young woman in the whole of Israel (1 Kings 1:1-4). David was climbing towards heaven. Before him Moses and Abraham had seen the place.

For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city. Heb 11:14-16  

It is that place where there will be no old age, pain or tears (Rev 21:1-4). I pray God would grant us all that vision, so we can sing with Moses this song: ‘So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom’ (Psa 90:12). 

David couldn’t see Abishag. He saw greater things ahead. He was climbing and what he saw in his upward vision was better than any earthly beauty.

‘For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting’ (Gal 6:8).

For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth. Psa 71:5    

By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother's bowels: my praise shall be continually of thee. Psa 71:6

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. Psa 71:9 

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come. Psa 71:18

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Psa 90:10  

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. Isa 46:4