My Unusual Journal
My Unusual Journal 26 - Tuesday, September 06, 2011, 1:58 PM
Trusting God Whatever Comes
I hesitate to harp on the fact that I am ninety years old. In one way of looking at it, it’s no big deal; there are plenty of people around the globe who are that age and older. But the fact that I, Aaron J. Smith, have reached ninety (almost 91) is not any source of praise to me; I merely lived the life God gave me. Reaching this advanced age with the ability to reason and to hear the voice of God has to be a testimony to the grace and power of God. In the five-year interim since the following discourse was written (when I was eighty-five years of age) I have often felt the attempted incursions of the physical and mental afflictions that accompany old age. In fact, I believe God has kept me living beyond my “normal” time because He was not through with me yet in this life.
I have said more than a few times that I know God has no world-shaking work for me to do, but I am happy and honored He would keep me around to simply do what I am doing – writing and living what I write by the grace of God. If I should die tomorrow or live and be afflicted with senility or Alzheimer’s disease, that would not lessen God’s wisdom and power and glory in keeping me alive and with a clear mind up to this point. Without His grace I would have succumbed to the ravages of old age some years ago.
The remainder of this post is the edited reprint of 12/09/05:
To preface my remarks, let me say that I am eighty-five years of age and have thus been an "old man" for at least the last twenty years. Big deal. I am somewhat used to the label and the physical and mental slowing down that goes with it. But yesterday was not a particularly good day for me. Satan – or my own human makeup or someone – threw a fast ball and a curve ball, combined, straight at my head. Of course I have been aware for many years of the twin terrors of Alzheimer's and senility that can be potholes in an older person's roadway into the final rest for which he longs, so I should have been prepared for signs of their arrival. Well, I was, in a way – but...
On this day something – whatever it was – came against me in a strong show of force. It was more than a presage or an advance notice. What was happening to me was too much like the real thing. Whereas on a normal day I have temporary lapses of memory of what I am doing and/or how to do it, this was a several hours long siege. It was annoying and rather disconcerting. Was this “it” and was I finally being overtaken by one or both of the two most feared scourges of old age?
At one point I had to stop and take stock of what was happening. I was unable to retain a thought from one minute to the next. Let’s face it: I was a confused old man. In the midst of all the uncertainties of what was going on, I had to face the probability that I was in fact beginning to enter the quicksand of old age. Sound ideas and concepts were flitting in my mind as they had so often before, but they were just as quickly flitting out, sometimes not to return, no matter how hard I tried to recapture them. The thought of facing a future saddled by a host of problems that are corollary to senility was prominent in my mind, and this – as you would expect – was not a flitting thought; it came prepared to take up permanent residence until I would no longer be around for it to badger me.
Several times I just had to quit trying to think and laid my head down on my desk. And of course at those times I was able to focus on my Maker; I could center my thoughts on Him, and He, in His mercy, did not allow those precious thoughts to escape me. I wasn't really praying so much as I was thinking and letting God take my thoughts and tell me what He had to say. It is of little matter that when I would resume my efforts to write clearly, the memory lapses would come back to plague me. The important thing is that I was better prepared after my brief “talk” with God to deal with my human frailties. God’s reassurance took the cutting edge from my confusion and shored me up enough that I did not fold under the pressure.
God did not assure me that I would never be felled by a declining mind nor did He comfort me with the promise that old age would not fully overtake me. But He did tell me what two things I have been saying over and over for the past two decades: 1) Whatever the child of God has to endure, he CAN endure by the grace of God who knows what He has instilled into His servant; and 2) nothing can stop me from fulfilling the will of God for my life – whether affliction or senility or Alzheimer's – IF I am committed to that fulfillment.
I don't have any rose-tinted lenses for you or me to look through; I can't promise you or myself what God has not promised, but on those two items I can commit my soul and my heart and my mind and my whole being. There is no doubt about it: God’s grace can take us through the fires of hell and bring us out unharmed. Furthermore, God will keep you and me functioning as long as He has a work for us to do and as long as we are committed to doing it.
I am not speaking out of confusion now; there is no uncertainty in my mind – God does not speak through a confused mind. I am telling you plainly and as positively as I know how – you need God and you have to trust Him completely. Don't make it easy for God; He doesn't need your helping hand: You need His. You have to fall on this Rock and let it break you in contrition for having ever doubted His wisdom and love and power.
I will be honest with you. I can't boast about my great faith or how good and faithful I've been throughout my life. Yes, I have known God and served Him many years, but I was not perfect and I’m not perfect now, so I don't presume to tell Him what to do with me. He knows the reaping I must endure yet in this present life. He knows what I need to be perfected. All I ask of God is that He give me grace for the day to do His will. And if that day should stretch into weeks and months and years, He will continue to supply me with grace for the day, as each one comes around. There is a certain poem that says, "He holds our moments in His hand and gives them one by one.” That is enough by which the one who trusts God can live his entire life, one moment at a time.
Now that the troubles of yesterday have passed, God has brought me back to "normalcy," normalcy, that is, for me and I am so grateful for this semblance of normalcy. What the future holds I cannot tell, but neither can you, no matter at what stage of life you may be, in your dewy youth, middle age or older. God alone holds all our futures in His hands and when He says, "It’s enough!" it will then be enough and only then.
So trust God, whoever you are and whatever your age. And don’t worry about tomorrow and what might happen to you. God doesn’t want you to fret about the future; He wants you to trust implicitly in Him. Your life cannot fail to be a thing of beauty – if you will only trust in Him. Isn’t He a great and loving and caring God, and don’t you long to love Him more in return for the many touches of His love in your life?
As for me – I am committed to my Lord and I can truthfully say I am not afraid of what demons, a cantankerous old body or a fragile, similarly old mind can throw at me. Why? Because God holds my hand. It’s all I need.
Trusting as the moments fly,
Trusting as the days go by,
Trusting Him whate'er befall,
Trusting Jesus, that is all.
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