daily java

Daily Java:

O Lord, you alone are my hope.
    I’ve trusted you, O Lord, from childhood.
Yes, you have been with me from birth;
    from my mother’s womb you have cared for me.
    No wonder I am always praising you! (Psalm 71:5-6)

We are in Longton, Kansas this morning speaking at a church so we will miss you.
I had my 63rd birthday this week. I never really envisioned myself being this age. It is not that I expected to die violently or anything, I just never had thought about being in my 60’s until one day – BAM! – I was. And someone once said that turning 60 is much easier than staying 60.

But here I am.

Except for a short time in the army, all my life I have been in a church setting. I have been a pastor of some kind or other since 1974. But I read an article about an 80 year old man who had Alzheimer’s and it dawned on me that it is only 17 years in the future before I am 80. I will never be as old as Pastor Mel, that is true, as he is several months older than I.

But here I am, 63 years old and I both see and feel the age. I am no longer the bull I was in my 30’s. Now I do snort like a bull on occasion trying to clear my sinuses but that is about it.

Looking at the world and the things that have transpired in my life, I am both pleased and displeased. I married sister Ella in 1971 and we are still married and like each other. That astonishes the guys in jail, most of whom have come from broken lives. But that is a good thing in my life. However, she has deteriorated physically from the cute little mini-skirted girl I married. And, of course, I am no longer the giant specimen of manly perfection that I was in my own mind then either.

The world has not prospered in the interim, either. Our society has grown from an open society in 1949 when I was born to a closed society of paranoid fear today. Society has gone from happy to angry, prosperous to deprived, open to closed.

Several years ago in the mid 90’s I worked for a newspaper and ran a picture of the graduating class of that year. I came across the graduating class of 1953 and ran it too. the difference was astonishing. The class of 1953 looked clear-eyed and hopeful, the class of ‘93 looked worn-out.

And you see it and hear it on the street. 15 year old girls curse worse than guys did in the army. Virtual nudity is acceptable anywhere. Really fat people walk around in skin-tight clothing. There is no innocence, no real hope, just a life lived to try to get as much as you can before someone else takes it.

All right. I got a little depressed on my birthday and do not like what the years have brought to our country and our civilization. That’s the problem, really. Only God is our hope, as the Psalmist says. And only in him is there any relief from what the devil has done to our society.

God bless you and keep you.