Thank You, Seniors

Through my years of ministry, there have been numerous mistakes that I have made while  leading worship. Let me share one of those mistakes with you.  In my late teens while I was still in college, I served as associate pastor at Salem UM Church in Fayetteville.  While I was participating in worship on Senior Citizens Day, the Senior Pastor asked me to read the scripture.  While I was supposed to read from Matthew 15, I made a mistake and read from Luke 15.  After I read a portion of the parable of the prodigal Son, the Senior Pastor told me that the only way that he could see that scripture fit with his sermon on Senior Citizens Day was that the elder son was actually an “elderly” senior citizen. 

 In the days of Jesus, senior citizens were held in high regard.  They were elders in age and wisdom.  In Isaiah 46:4, we read:  “Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you.  I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”    What the prophet Isaiah is saying is that God was at work in senior citizens as he was at work in the lives of other folks.   We see that truth in the scriptures in the lives of people like Abraham, Moses, and others being used by God even in their older years.   

 The season of Autumn or Fall is a beautiful time of year.   I don’t know about you, but I love to see the bright colors of the leaves in the Fall.  Many folks travel to the mountains to see the Fall colors.    Has it ever occurred to you that the leaves are a fitting metaphor for the human life?    As the leaves are beautiful near the end of their life, so the senior citizen days of human life also have great beauty and fullness.   If you are a senior citizen, I trust that you will “not hide your light under a bushel” but let God work in and through you.  If you are not a senior citizen,  give God thanks for the beauty of the lives of  our senior citizens live among us. -  Pastor Randy Wall 

 

PRAYER

            Loving and living God, thank you for the bounty and blessing of the older adults in my life, our church, and our community.    Give me an open heart to see the life lessons they have to teach me;  through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.