Thoughts on Turning 70

This morning, sitting here with a hot cup of raspberry/hibiscus tea, ruminating,  I realize that within thirty days I begin my seventieth year. Not surprisingly my contemplative soul is setting interesting goals, aspiring to a new height, and pray tonight I dream some new dreams.  I pray that it will afford me the chance for a fresh start and a new beginning.  But on the other hand, for some of my neighbors, acquaintances, and even friends, at this age, are fearful and dreading both real and imagined disaster.  I must confess, I also do see the world at times a terrifying place not welcoming to my timididty, sensitivity, or fearful heart.

In one of the climactic scenes of The Lord of the Rings, the young hobbit, Frodo, laments the world he sees around him with all its tragedy and darkness.  Looking at the difficulty in continuing on the mission before him, Frodo makes a plaintive request, "I wish it need not have happened in my time."  Gandalf the Grey, ever his wise mentor, consoles him with these words: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.  There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.  Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it.  And that is an encouraging thought."

I have decided  that all I have to decide is what to do with the time that is given me. It is fairly safe to say that in entering a new decade there will indeed be crises of one sort or another.  I’m not naive to think that such crises might cause me to pine for another time from some yesteryear gone by or make me wish my journey would be a different and a far more pleasant trip.
 
While my longing for something more, something different, and something better speaks to me of what should be, I recognize in the past I often allow my longings to lead me beyond my present moment.  I have made myself impotent to the possibility of decision to make the best of the time that is given to me.  Mired in wishful thinking, I have fail to act here and now with resolute mission in the times I have been given.

I had never thought before this morning: that when Jesus prayed what would be one of his last prayers prior to his crucifixion, he prayed for his disciples as he knew he would leave them to a task far greater and more difficult than they could possibly imagine.  I realized that he didn’t pray that God would rescue them from the times they would face!  Peter and others in this fellowship would soon be martyred as a result of their mission.  Yet, Jesus doesn't pray that they would be saved from the world in which they were living.  Jesus prayed, "I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from evil.... As you did send me into the world, I also have sent them into the world" (John 17:15-18).

Jesus, sent into the world by God, now sends me, as a seventy year old follower to bear witness to the faith, hope, and love found in the kingdom Jesus inaugurated in his life and ministry.  Jesus encourages me to find my peace and security in him.  "These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).  On the other hand, Jesus is empowering me by calling me to mission—to witness to him in the world, regardless of the tribulation I am going to find there. He is calling me to purposeful action in this small part of the world of "here and now," and is sending me into my world to share the good news regardless of the times I have been given.

Like Frodo and the other members of the Fellowship of the Ring, I can so easily look around myself and see the peril of the journey in this world.  I don’t want to deceive myself in the temptation and desire to avoid difficulty and pain, and my longing for another kind of world, to borrow the words of a familiar phrase of my dad, often make me "so heavenly minded that I am no earthly good."  Yet, I’m convinced that my longings for what is good, beautiful, and right for my world does not have to lead me to escapism or flights of fantasy.  Rather, as another decade begins, my longing for a better world can compel me as a resolute witness to the gospel as the force of good for my world.  Indeed, my longings can lead me to decide what I can do to make the best of the times I have been given.