The Golden Years

Experts tell us the keys to aging gracefully include accepting changes and finding meaningful activities. Sooner or later, we have to face it: no matter how determined we've been, we come face-to-face to that wall that says a different season of our life has arrived.

The changes may have come slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, but they still came and we are now on the brink of what will inevitably be the last part of our Life Journey. But don't despair! My mom used to say that “Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.” She imparted such wisdom all her life until she went home to Heaven at 101 years of age.

Billy Graham put it well when he said: “When granted many years of life, growing old in age is natural, but growing old with grace is a choice.”

God has always given mankind a choice, the choice that we face now is simple: Will we get older, or will we get old? That choice will determine how our life journey will finish.

When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, God gave them the ability to choose for themselves. When the serpent, that wily old devil, approached Eve with the question,“Did God really say . . . ?” He gave her an option to choose to obey what God had expressly commanded or to act in disobedience to God's will. We know now that Eve chose the wrong option and then led Adam to go along with her. Mankind has suffered from that bad choice ever since.

From the time we are born until the time we leave this earth, choices are the biggest factor in our Life Journey. As we look at studying how to age gracefully, we will be looking at our choices, both the choices we have already made and the choices we have yet to make.