Thought Exercise on Old Age

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The Secret to a Long Life

Author

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On his hundredth birthday, a reporter asked the man the inevitable question: “What do you attribute your long life to?” The old man replied, “I haven’t decided yet. I’m still negotiating with a supple...

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Where our Growth in Grace Comes From

Author

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Keywords

Scripture

1 John 2:13

In a November 1882 sermon on 1 John 2, the renowned pastor and preacher C. H. Spurgeon offers a profound insight into the nature of Christian maturity. His remarks come as part of his exposition on th...

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Finding God in the Slowness of Life

Author

A. J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta

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We admit that embracing slowness is hard . But slowness transforms us. One of our favorite theologians, Dr. John Goldingay, served for decades as a professor of Old Testament theology. Goldingay ...

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Ty Cobb's Batting Average

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

At seventy years old, Ty Cobb, considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time, was asked by a reporter, “What do you think your batting average would be if you were playing today? Do you ...

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God Has a Reason for Keeping Us Here

Author

Billy Graham

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No, old age is not for sissies. But that isn’t the whole story, nor did God intend for it to be. While the Bible doesn’t gloss over the problems we face as we grow older, neither does it paint old age...

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Why Some People Live Longer

Author

Amy Novotney

Keywords

Scripture

John 15:12-13, Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, Proverbs 16:31, Exodus 20:12, Psalm 91:16, Proverbs 3:1-2

Most people who live to old age do so not because they have beaten cancer, heart disease, depression or diabetes. Instead, the long-lived avoid serious ailments altogether through a series of steps th...

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New Bodies in the New Creation

Author

John Eldredge

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 3:20-21, 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 2 Corinthians 5:1-2, Revelation 21:4

I love that part in The Silver Chair when old age simply vanishes from frail King Caspian, because age is the unavoidable meltdown, stripping even the bravest and most beautiful of their former glor...

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A Perfect Retirement?

Author

Eric Thurman

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In his book Thrive in Retirement, Eric Thurman shares the story of close friends preparing for their golden years: My husband was a lawyer who joked that after “the big case” came across his desk, h...

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Know Where You Are Going

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:1-31, Revelation 4:11, Psalm 139:13-14, John 14:6, Philippians 3:20-21

When Billy Graham was 92 years old, he was struggling with Parkinson's disease. In January, a month before his 93rd birthday, leaders in Charlotte, North Carolina, invited their favorite son, Bill...

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St. Anthony, the Great Desert Monk

Author

Henri J. M. Nouwen

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Scripture

Matthew 19:21, Isaiah 30:15, Mark 1:35, Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13

St. Anthony, the “father of monks,” is the best guide in our attempt to understand the role of solitude in ministry. Born around 251, Anthony was the son of Egyptian peasants. When he was about eighte...

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The Shining City

Author

Anthony Campolo

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Scripture

Matthew 16:26, Matthew 16:19-21, Proverbs 3:5-6

Success is a shining city, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We dream of it as children, we strive for it through our adult lives, and we suffer melancholy in old age if we have not reached it....

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It Goes Without Saying

Author

E. Randolph Richards and Richard James

Keywords

Scripture

John 14:27, Matthew 2:2, Revelation 19:16, John 18:36-37, Revelation 17:14, Zechariah 9:9, Isaiah 9:6, Psalm 24:7-10, Colossians 1:15-20, Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-40, John 12:12-16

In a culture, the most important things usually go without being said. We Westerners don’t talk all the time about being individualists or about the importance of efficiency or why we prefer youth ove...

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Can You Forgive a Monster?

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 5:44, Proverbs 20:22, Mark 11:25, Colossians 3:13, Ephesians 4:31-32, Romans 12:19-21, Matthew 6:14-15

Revenge and forgiveness are major themes of Michael Christopher’s play, The Black Angel. In it, Herman Engel is Nazi general responsible for killing over 200 French Jews. Convicted of his crimes by th...

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When Failure Launches our Greatest Success

Author

Charles Colson

Keywords

Sometimes God takes our greatest failures and turns them into our greatest successes. Charles “Chuck” Colson had risen the ladder of national political success at breakneck speed. After a tour in the ...

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Remembering We Have Bodies

Author

Ruth Haley Barton

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:31, 1 Timothy 4:4-5, Colossians 1:16, Romans 1:20, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 2 Corinthians 5:1

Surprisingly enough, it was in the process of staying faithful to the spiritual journey that I first began to face my profound ambivalence about life in a body. At the ripe old age of thirty, I could ...

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Aging is not Diminishment

Author

Joan Chittister

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 46:4, Psalm 92:13-14, 2 Corinthians 4:16, Titus 2:2-3, Psalm 37:25

Speaking on aging, the Catholic nun Joan Chittister has this to say: One thing this period is not about is diminishment, though physical diminishment is surely a natural part of it. It is, instead, ...

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40 Million People Dechurched in 25 Years

Author

Ian Harber

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 24:12, Hebrews 10:25, John 6:66, Proverbs 18:1, Isaiah 53:6

[R]eliable quantitative research around this has brought some helpful insights to light. Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge have released the largest study ever done on dechurching in America i...

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Justice is Personal

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 25:40, Leviticus 19:15, Galatians 3:28, James 2:8-9, Amos 5:24, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17

When did the topic of justice become important to you?” Gideon Strauss posed that question to two dozen people crammed into our living room one fall evening in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Some of us wer...

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It is Well

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 5:4, Psalm 147:null, Psalm 34:18, Revelation 21:1-8, 2 Corinthians 1:3-12, Romans 8:18-28, John 11:null, 2 Thessalonians 3:16, John 14:27, 1 Peter 5:7, Daniel 6:, Psalm 46:, Psalm 23:, Job 1:, Job 2:, 2 Samuel 11:, 2 Samuel 12:

If you ever travel to Jerusalem and are looking for sites to see, beyond all the ‘must-see’ sites related to Ancient Israel, the Temple Mount, and the sites associated with Jesus, you might venture to...

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All the Succession of Time

Author

Jeremy Taylor

Keywords

All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every one, preaches our funer...

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Living in Transition

Author

William Bridges

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I became interested in the subject of transition outer changes around 1970 when I was going through some difficult inner and outer changes. Although I gave up my teaching career because of those chang...

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More Isolated than Ever

Author

Alexandra Kuykendall

Keywords

Whether young or old, Americans are feeling more isolated. According to a recent study from the Pew Research Center, about half of Americans have weekly interactions with their neighbors, which means ...

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Therese of Lisieux's Prayer

Author

Richard J. Mouw

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 34:6–7, Genesis 50:19–21, 2 Samuel 9:1–13, Luke 18:1–8 , Luke 7:36–50, Psalm 103:8–14

I personally get some inspiration for getting at the nature of this work from a story told by one of my favorite spiritual writers, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Thérèse was born in 1873, to a devout Cath...

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How to Get to Dublin

Author

Jonathan Grant

Keywords

Travel

An old Irish joke tells how a tourist in the County of Cork asks a local man how to get to the big city of Dublin. “Ah,” responds the local man with a deeply furrowed brow, “I wouldn’t be starting fro...

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A Distinctive Kind of Contract

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Genesis 6:18, Genesis 9:null, Genesis 9:11, Jeremiah 31:31, Luke 22:20

Contracts. We all have them, by the dozens. In business, government, and in our personal lives, contracts provide structure and order for relationships that are essential to all of life. Contracts tel...

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Don’t Look Down But Up

Author

Rowan Williams

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 10:24-25, Philippians 2:3-4, Ephesians 4:2, Romans 12:10, 1 Peter 5:5

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

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Image is Everything

Author

Tony Reinke

Keywords

Image

Tennis superstar Andre Agassi was only nineteen years old when he starred in a television commercial for Canon cameras. The spot featured him in all sorts of eye-grabbing poses, a spectacle on display...

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The Easter Message

Author

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Keywords

Easter

Scripture

Matthew 28:20

In this sermon preached by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Barcelona, 1928, the young pastor (just 22 years old), preaches on Mathew 28:20 and the promise of Jesus to be with the disciples, even after he ascen...

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Making Good Decisions

Author

Ben Patterson

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I read of a young man who had just been appointed to the presidency of a bank at the tender age of thirty-two. The promotion was far beyond his wildest dreams and very frightening to him, so he went t...

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The Death Pledge

Author

Patrick Foote

Keywords

Mortgage is a French word. It’s a combination of two Old French words, mort meaning “death” and gage meaning “pledge.” Yep, signing a mortgage means you are signing a death pledge. It was named this a...

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