There are several large factors that form the major belief and conduct patterns in persons growing old. Jesus referred to the conscious period of aging as ending somewhere between seventy and eighty years of age and made the observation applicable to a consciousness of death, with death made acceptable because of the difficulties of earth life and hope for immortality. The period is made longer or shorter to the degree one is able to sustain health and attitude. Many persons (devout or pagan) face aging to death with fear. Others welcome it at some point to be relieved of weakness in declining strength in mind and body, and a feeling of growing detachment from the mainstream of activity in the context of their lives. A major purpose for Jesus was to inform his audiences about how to meet the final experience of every person – death. He gave hope to those who would grasp his message that would turn a final experience in nature to an experience of transition from life to life. He illustrated the plan of God in his own nature experience of death in the most trying of sufferings only to be followed with resurrection to life unaffected by any form of decline.
Right or wrong as mankind evaluates ideas and conduct, Jesus was addressing the most prevalent question for serious persons living a life that would end in nature. The ending of life is common for all things that have life. That applies to all living entities, plant and animal. Physically in nature mankind is animal dealing with the demands of life and death. In the gestures of the creator, mankind is spiritual. If spiritual health is born and cultivated in the human being that reality is not threatened by any human experience, including death. The weaknesses of physical life, the failures, the disappointments, even the experiences and achievements savored in human memory are interred with the lifeless body. All things will be made new. The evaluations of God are not the evaluations common to mankind without the revelation of God.
Elderly persons vary in what they want in their remaining period of life – as younger generations also vary in their wishes and plans. Changes in circumstances and cultures lead to variant expectations and hopes. For example, the changes in family culture, urban and transient life, have led to a decline in family devotion. Many persons find friendships, when cultivated as families meant to make relationships, will choose the friend in the place of a family member, if needs come to such judgments. With the decline of the family and the substitute of the state, life has changed. Once cared for by the family through wants and needs, the elderly are now turning to retirement centers, seeking professional assistance for their assets, and reducing their contact with family in either assisting or being assisted in the course of life. As seniors retreat from assisting in the care of grandchildren so are their children retreating from the care of the aging and aged members of the family. The new approach is more expensive than the old, reduces the concepts of family roles, introduces a new loneliness, sometimes regret. For some the new approach is preferred, for others it spells a decline in life pattern and the meaning of the family in the understanding, love, care and participation of serving and being served. There is some distortion in the shifting. Some persons unwilling to do much that is meaningful for their families may give and participate in the betterment of social situations for strangers than for family members. Many social angels have contributed much to society and little to their families, even their children. Whatever we plan in life, whether young or old we are in age parameters, God meant for us to be concerned for, and involved in the needs of family members. I have found fulfillment in the identification with my family – to the degree that my first concern remains our relationship carrying the sense of continuity to it and mutual identity with each other, at marked different intensities. My writings about life and the approval of God for family/mankind seem to be about the only social interests remaining for my life. My life is filled up, but never finished. It will move on. Christian faith does that for whatever remains at any age in a believer’s life, in strength or weakness, in joy or sorrow – in all. There accumulates, as one grows older, awareness of presence from God. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020