Monday Memo 1179: Decide Now

As we close this series on 'Never Too Old for Purpose,' let's look at the words of Jeremiah, the prophet who God sent to His people with a word that would be ignored to their doom:

"He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead" (Lamentations 3:4-6).

As Jeremiah looked back over the years, the verses above were his summary of his condition which seemed bleak and depressing. He further wrote,

"I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope" (Lamentations 3:19-21).

As I write, I'm sitting in a hospital room with an elderly relative and this would perhaps be their testimony as well. They are suffering physically after the end of a long, painful life, The problem for this person, however, is that they can't finish the story as Jeremiah did, for after all was said and done, Jeremiah offered this conclusion:

"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “'he Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him'" (Lamentations 3:22-24).

As you grow older, you can easily have quite a collection of disappointments, failures, mistakes, and painful memories. You will then have two options of how to assess a life that perhaps fell short of your expectations. You can either be resentful, angry, or disillusioned, or you can take the position that Jeremiah took. You can trust in the Lord to the end, even if it is bitter.

We can now thank God for Jeremiah, for his testimony and faithfulness have been an encouragement to God followers for more than several millennia. God put him through a lot, but he emerged victorious not for his contemporaries' sake but for ours. The time to decide how you will die is while you are still living, while you have energy and mental clarity. You can decide to be a person of purpose to the end, even if God uses you as an example for others in your latter days.

How and when will you die? No one knows the specifics but we can decide the conditions where we are at right now. Will you be a person of purpose to the end? That you can decide. I invite you to join me in that pursuit as we seek to honor God with all our days, both the ones with youthful vigor and the ones with diminished capacity. When we decide to do that, we will certainly prove that no one is ever too old for purpose, for God to use them (and us) as He sees fit. Have a blessed week.