In semi-retirement, I continued some of the context of what I had done professionally, some in emeritus roles but with new added factors. I was part of business interests with others, including a period of interim ministries at churches with building and expansion interests that involved a church construction company. In addition I launched several writing projects and remain as busy as ever without institutional obligations. I am in the tenth decade of my life, and when engaged in both spiritual and professional interests related to secular and spiritual contexts in churches and colleges, I found that those interests contributed to my life and health in such a way that I have no doubt that my lengthened years are related to the continued forays of business and relationships that have been my life for decades. There are days when, except for the cell phone minutes, I make no audible sound to anyone else. My life and training required much discussion and speaking to others. For the most part that’s over, but with quiet and meaningful involvement.
The commitment to active faith life, which at this stage may or may not include others than my family, helped me in the adjustment to living alone after fifty seven years of a happy marriage. She has been absent for more than a dozen years, and I have found the earthly days to be very special in my memories, not only of family, which my children sustain with me in the review of years gone by. Friends, colleagues, experiences, quality of human and spiritual life can be enjoyed by anyone applying energy and values anticipated during the years of required busyness. It ought to be gratifying. Preparation for old age usually relates to both financial and health factors in the communications we receive daily in the media, and in conversations/study. The best of all is seldom referred to, or is related to some neutral accommodation like meditation, or volunteerism or other beneficial distraction. To have lived so that one can claim that God, in whatever way he achieves human practical care, is present in the very present. It is a mystery to be gained. In this sense, we share a bit of immortality – now. Yesterday doesn’t make any difference at the end of the road. Tomorrow is unsure. I am here now, an old man who is trying to tell his story that has offered fulfillment so to encourage the young to prepare for their years. What should I say? The good life will not happen if the person doesn’t take charge, perhaps modestly, to make it happen. If we do not care, why should God care? He wants us to say with Abraham that we have been satisfied with life.
The scientific age is taken with evidence – with proofs of the conclusions we make. That little rule saves some persons from making terrible mistakes. The biggest mistake is to believe physical evidence is the only kind that we identify alongside nature. In my context the one great proof of God is life. All the solar system, and beyond is full of space, elements, rock and sand, of a kind of alternation related to speed, silence and fireworks, but nothing alive – at least as we are able to find life identified with humanity. Scientists are trying to find water on some planet so as to believe there may have once been life there. So far we have nothing. (In 2015 we may have found ice-mountains on Pluto.) Life on Earth in a dangerous solar system seems to be unique. Earth life tells me something special. I am told that God made an animal, and breathed into it the breath of lives (that included me). In that gesture there was something of God added to his earlier creation – nature. Life is the great mystery, especially human/divine life imposed on nature’s structure. He made it possible for this special person of his image. (God is a Spirit and has no image as we may commonly interpret the word.) In that mystery image, man and woman were made, and by procreation, they do what God did – passing that image along. Whether a cypher in the universe or great, the human being can do what God did – make (pro-create) a person who possesses something of the image of God. For believers of the above, abortion becomes: taking God’s name in vain. We rightly support the concept made popular by Albert Schweitzer to treat life with sacredness, not only spiritual sacredness, but all life as well. When this concept of the image of God in human life is believed we learn a bit more about the love of God, a desire to protect that life in any person, and find ways to accent the portal of meaning for the death of any person. It applies to all persons at any age. We tend to mourn for those taken from us, but the person of faith laments the loss with Christian hope. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020