“To every thing there is a season,” Solomon began the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. He goes on to affirm that “there is a time for every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal.”
Life is a chain of inevitable, inescapable changes; only God changes not. Some changes are hard to swallow. In 1829, Martin Van Buren, then the governor of New York, wrote to President Andrew Jackson: “The canal system of this country is being swallowed up by the spread of a new form of transportation known as ‘railroads.’ …As you may well know, railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by engines, which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.” (Copied from Sylvia Simmons, How to Be the Life of the Podium.)
Or, did you hear about the old farmer that brought his family to the big city, with all its new skyscrapers, for the very first time? They had never seen such. He dropped his wife off at the department store and took his son with him to the bank—the tallest of all the buildings. As they walked into the lobby, they saw something they had never seen before. Two steel doors opened. A rather large, aged woman walked out, and the big doors closed behind her. The dial over the door swept to the right and then back to the left. The doors opened and a beautiful young lady came walking out. The farmer was amazed. He turned to his son and said, “You wait right here. I’m going to get your mother and run her through that thing.”
There is an interesting dialogue between Jesus and the Apostle Peter recorded in the last few verses of John 21 (vv. 18-22). Jesus said to Peter, “When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself and walkest whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not. This spake He, signifying by what death he should glorify God.” John was close by, and when Peter was told how he would die, he said, pointing to John, “And what shall this man do?” Jesus responded: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me.”
Our physical capacities with age will no doubt change, as will the circumstances we find ourselves in. But the priority we have now, if we are His disciple—regardless of our age—is to follow Jesus. Period. That never changes. The Psalmist cried out, “O God, be not far from me: O my God, make haste for my help. Now also when I am old and gray headed, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.” (Ps. 71:12, 18)
I have periodically taught these principles, citing these and many other passages, for years. Now I find myself where the Psalmist did: I am in the “old age” group. What I had read beaucoup times in Ecclesiastes 12, I now read with a heightened appreciation: “In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders shall cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened.” (Eccl. 12: 1-8)
I heard about two caterpillars crawling across the grass when a butterfly flew over them. They looked up, and one of them nudged the other, as caterpillars often do, and said, “You could not get me up on one of those things for a million dollars.” I am more reticent to make such dogmatic assertions about change now that I am of “old age.” In fact, I wish for that moment of change of which Paul spake, “Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (I Cor. 15:51,52)
Take heart, believing caterpillars!
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” (Eccl. 12:1)
