Greeting-card slogans and our age-phobic culture color the incessant but natural process of aging, emphasizing its challenges, limitations, and frustrations. But because we are spiritual beings, God’s Spirit has the power to bring to our consciousness some alternative responses to aging, ever reminding us that we are made for more than an earthly existence.

Scripture provides this perspective on agingFor the purposes of this article, let’s consider “aging” to be the collective results of adding years to earthly lives. by viewing it from a spiritual and holistic perspective. As new creations in Christ Jesus2 Corinthians 5:17. with a restored image of God in our lives, our aging experiences are “redeemed”Colossians 4:5, KJV, speaks of “redeeming the time.” The Message and several other versions (NCV, NET, NIV) word it this way: “Make [or making] the most of every opportunity.” and can be evaluated not as liabilities but as assets that contribute positively to maturation into the likeness of Jesus.

This appraisal of aging is illustrated by how the apostle Paul saw life in Christ (challenging as it was) as much grander in purpose and more fulfilling than his life accomplishments before Christ (tribal heritage, status with the law, moral conditionPhilippians 3:5–6.). In Christ Paul saw all of life in a new dimension. Forms of the Greek word teleios (“maturity,” “end result”) occur frequently in his letters and point to quality of life that transcends the simple passing of time and experiences. Aging as teleios is associated with completeness, fulfillment, being finished, accomplished, bringing about perfected development, fullness of growth.

Examined through this lens of spiritual maturing, our passages in aging can be reframed and cherished for their contribution to our continued development in Christlikeness. If we believe that eternal life begins now, each new life passage brings with it insights, challenges, and opportunities that can contribute toward “finishing” with a greater grasp of what God values. Time and experience can increase quality of spiritual life that enables us to more fully live out God’s purposes for which we were designed.

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01.  The Bible as a Text of Human Aging

Considering the numerous references to the chronicling of human years in Scripture, one would assume that God attaches significance to a person’s accumulation of years. An abbreviated review of entries illustrates the importance of “aging milestones” and “marker events.” There are the endless obituaries recording completion of “a good old age” in earthly life:

 

• “Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died” (Genesis 5:5Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™).
• “Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died” (Genesis 5:27).
• “Abraham lived 175 years. Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years” (Genesis 25:7–8).
• “Altogether, Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died” (Genesis 9:29).

 

All this numbering suggests that the record of accumulated years must have had purpose in the biblical narrative. Occasionally we are given insight into what it might have been like to live out those years. Noah’s three sons, born after he was five hundred years old,Genesis 5:32. grew up building the ark while the people around them must have thought they were crazy. The boys stuck with him in spite of the pull from the surrounding decadent society. Can you imagine how aging during those years was framed with purpose, conviction, and single-mindedness in the midst of corruption and opposing values? Somehow the sons found wives who joined this radical family’s purpose during that time. All this working on the boat and finding wives was part of their aging within a one-hundred-year period.Genesis 7:6 says, “Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth.”

What we often miss is the statement that precedes Noah’s obituary: “after the flood Noah lived 350 years.”Genesis 9:28. More than half a lifetime was spent aging in a post-flood society without anyone left for him to say, “I told you so!” to. What a rich season it must have been, as God established an unforgettable covenant with Noah and his descendants. Sometimes the richest benefits of aging with God come in those after-flood years.After years of struggle, adversity, resistance, and pain.

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02.  Viewing Time without Purpose

At times we resonate with biblical characters’ dilemmas and emotions through the lens of our own increasing years. This gives us insight into how they might have reconciled the pains of the aging process with a God who is good. Step into the drama of Luke 8, for example. The woman had been bleeding for twelve years. It had ruined her social life, her economic stash, and her physical stamina. Her twelve-year scourge must have torn at her self-esteem. Imagine twelve years of continual decline and wondering whether you were going to be this way for the rest of your life. The process of aging this way must have undermined her sense of personal identity (Luke 8:43–48).

Like her, many of us experience the frustration of going through years that seem “wasted.” When we focus only on the passage of time itself, it’s difficult to imagine how it might be part of God’s purpose or plan. From this point of view, we look at incidents asking How can I get out of this? rather than How am I gaining insight into God’s ways and becoming more complete in knowing God?

In the same passage, Luke notes that the dying child of a harried synagogue ruler had been born the same year this woman had started her downward spiral.Luke 8:40–42, 49–56. As this little girl had grown, her parents no doubt prized her growing skills and achievements in becoming a woman of God. They saw life and growth as a gift from Yahweh. And then disease entered her body, and they watched the life ebb out of the one they had considered a gift. She was only twelve—too young to die. Who would die—the aging woman or the sick girl? These are two completely different stories of twelve years of aging—growing up healthy or growing increasingly ill. Consider what you were doing twelve years ago. This is a long time.

Twelve years of aging was important in these scenarios, and God redeemed both. In one case, after years of no change in her condition, the woman placed faith in Jesus and was released from more years of suffering. She found that what she had gone through had brought her to an encounter with Jesus, which led to faith. That’s where the spiritual growth began. In the girl’s case, the threat of her not aging beyond twelve years was resolved again by recognizing God at work cultivating faith and purposeful spiritual growth. As Dallas Willard confidently asserts: “Nothing irredeemable has happened or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God’s full world.”Previously unpublished article, “Living a Transformed Life Adequate for Our Calling,” Augustine Group, 2005.

The fact that Luke specifies “years”Luke 8:42–43. suggests to me the impact made when we consider time alone without the framing perspective of awareness of God’s purpose for that time. As we step into the shoes of the woman and then the parents, we see the possible effects of viewing time isolated from purpose. Consciousness of years is monitored by humans and affects how we look at what is taking place in time. To the woman, it was the frustration of constant anxiety stretching over twelve years. For the child’s parents, twelve years represented the continued physical growth, which was now suddenly met with the fear of loss. For us today, loss of skills and agility as well as loss of control over circumstances bring anxiety when viewed isolated from purpose. How we view time—as either isolated from God’s purposes or as somehow integral in God’s purposes—makes a huge difference.

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03.  Refining the Image of God in Us

For those of us interested in the presence of the God’s image growing within us, time is on our side. Often the image of God’s likeness is enhanced in us, for as time passes God is at work transforming us. The Spirit of Christ gives us opportunity to reflect him in the situations that come with each stage of life. We take responsibility for living truth in the scenarios of our times.

Think of how our knowledge of God (who God is, how he works, and our interaction with him) grows as we experience the reality of what he teaches us while we grow older. Ideally, the God of our childhood is a wonderful introductory encounter as we discover our world and what we can expect. The God we come to know in our youth adds new dimensions to our grasp of who he is and what he is able to do. We find him competent to handle our questions, and in the passage of time our breadth of experiencing God is continually enlarged. Like Lucy in Prince Caspian, we exclaim in surprise, “Aslan, you’re bigger,” as we become increasingly aware of Aslan’s magnitude and his continual ability to handle our crescendo of complex spheres of living. We experience what Aslan explained to Lucy: “Every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1979), 141. J. B. Phillips would remind us that our usual view of God is too small.J. B. Phillips, Your God Is Too Small (New York: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, 2004).

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04.  We Age in Our Spirituality

Aging is important because persons relate to God with their aging selves. And God through aging allows us to age (mature) in our spirituality and shows up as we relate to him in increasing Christlikeness that develops with our years. We find ourselves thinking in new ways as we “try on God’s truth,” responding to new dilemmas with discernment about how to live the reality of the worldview we claim to believe. This seems to have been true even for Jesus, as the writer of Hebrews suggests that going through the experiencing of time helped shape Jesus into a suitable substitute for us.Hebrews 2:10–18.

The writer of Hebrews also refers to the impact aging and maturity make on us as we make use of our deepening insights in actual, everyday occasions. “Solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” Hebrews 5:14. The implication is this: we participate in our own spiritual maturing. To those who actually live out what they know, there comes the continual increase in being able to consume even deeper truth. The significant word here is “mature,” translated in some texts as “them that are full of age” (KJVScriptures marked (KJV) are from the King James Version of the Bible and is in the public domain in most of the world.). But the word used for “mature” here is teleios, again, which is the same word Jesus used on the cross in asserting, “It is finished!” My favorite way of defining maturity is “to fully carry out that for which we were designed.” Aging helps to finish us. We complete, fulfill, and perfect the Creator’s design as we imbibe the “solid food” from the Word of God (written and living) and actively live out its reality in the times of our lives.

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05.  God’s Gift in Aging: Contentment

Each age adds something valuable to our lives even while other aspects of our living may be in decline. Hallmark cards and age-centered jokes frequently highlight the negatives: “You know you’re getting older when it takes twice as long to look half as good” or “when your back goes out more than you do.” While there may be things about our current biological age that we don’t like, there is also a certain God-given contentment that comes with our present stage—a kind of “at-homeness” within our current boundaries. When asked in her eighties if she would like to go back to a previous age, famed author Pearl Buck, who had experienced a full life, replied, “Would I wish to be ‘young’ again? No, for I have learned too much to wish to lose it. . . . I am a far more valuable person today than I was fifty years ago, or forty years ago, or thirty, twenty, or even ten. I have learned so much since I was seventy.”Quoted by D. F. Clingan, Aging Persons in the Community of Faith (Indianapolis, IN: Institute on Religion and Aging, 1980).

Aging when accompanied by maturing experiences of knowing God can provide a rich heritage of memories that can bring pleasure and insights long after those experiences have occurred. Remembrance of having triumphed over difficulties or savoring cherished moments from a past adds confidence, wisdom, and understanding to our present lives. Those who observe the insights, attitudes, and actions of those older and wiser than they see in their elders what they are likely to become in future years and, if wise, become aware of how to begin early to cultivate a confident relationship with God that will last. How empathic was the goodness of God to send Moses and Elijah (two who had experienced their own struggles with aloneness and lack of comprehension in ministry) to fellowship with Jesus during the Transfiguration about the process that was ahead of him.Luke 9:28–31.

As I watched sixty- to ninety-year-olds in my classroom interact with younger seminarians in processing concepts and questions about aging and maturing, I was impressed with the powerful change that interface produced. The younger students were encouraged by the fact that these older persons had survived and even thrived amid the constant challenges that the younger seminarians knew were ahead of them. Equally amazing was the reality of the senior adults’ deep faith, built over years of knowing God in the midst of decreasing control over an increasing fragility in life. The older participants were impressed with the concerns and awareness of the challenges the younger generations faced. They felt a sense of value as they realized what God had done through their lives. This intergenerational learning conveyed a shared sense of purpose and mission.

The contentment gained in aging steadies us through transitions. One of the negatives most often identified with aging is the reality of continual change. Nouwen advises, “Every time life asks us to give up a desire, to change our direction, or redefine our goals; every time we lose a friend, break a relationship, or start a new plan, we are invited to widen our perspectives.”Henri J. M. Nouwen and Walter J. Gaffney, Aging: The Fulfillment of Life (Colorado Springs, CO: Image Books, 1976), 67. Those transitions ready us to grasp truths that would have been impossible to recognize and appreciate at an earlier age. Franciscan monk and author Richard Rohr claims that the “spirituality of the second half of life is all about giving up control” and that the essence of “all great spirituality is about letting go.”Richard Rohr, “A Spirituality of Imperfection,” Richard Rohr on Transformation: Collected Talks (Volume One) Sound Recording (Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2005).

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06.  Arriving at the Fullness of Time

The experience of adding years can result in “the fullness of time” where God, in his greater design, creates the right moment for fulfilling his plan in and through us. For example,

Zechariah and Elizabeth had pled for a son earlier in their lives and had not seen their cries answered. Zechariah had gone through years of regular attendance among those assigned to a month of being available for potential service in the Temple sacrifice, praying for the Messiah to come (Luke 1). Yet he never was chosen to be the one to enter the temple on behalf of the people until the fullness of God’s time. Had their son been given earlier, John would have missed the window when the Christ appeared. Had Elizabeth been pregnant years earlier, would she have been given the privilege of being community to Mary? Had Zechariah served earlier he would not have been eligible to serve again and would never have experienced the angelic messenger. Aging allows us to fulfill our mission in the plan and timing of God.

Likewise Joseph lived out his mission in foreign territory so Israel could survive and become the people of God and inherit the God-Promised Land long after Joseph was gone. Israel claimed that promise because God used Joseph’s life in time to fulfill his greater eternal plan. As we trust God to work in the “fullness of time,” we build an awareness of the wisdom and faithfulness of God through a variety of circumstances. It frames our understanding of events.

Aging for the glory of God in our time allows each of us to carry out our mission and thus to participate in what for God is already a completed eternal now. So as we trust God in the purpose and redemption of our aging, we begin to see the fulfillment of what we have longed for throughout our years in time and the reality of the incomprehensible but already present eternal kingdom that celebrates the rule of the King.

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07.  Questions for Reflection

1. What might you identify as having changed in your view of God as you have aged?
2. How do you see yourself reflecting the “image of God” in this passage of your life?

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08.  Age Doesn’t Limit God

• God, in the pages of Scripture, is never hindered because of characteristics associated with a particular age. In fact, conditions often labeled handicaps in our culture become opportunities to display his ability through the so-called limitations of age. David was disdained by his brother as just a kid, a fact that King Saul himself wrestled with in his decision as he gambled the future of Israel by allowing the confidence and skill of this young, rural amateur to go up against Goliath (1 Samuel 17:33).

 

• When confronted with the reality that God can work outside of our biological age limitations, Zechariah focused on biological restrictions and included his wife, Elizabeth, in those beliefs (Luke 1:18). After the angelic messenger had delivered God’s promise of a son, this old priest dared to charge Gabriel with telling a lie because his senior age and that of his wife ruled out the possibility of their becoming parents. And God gave him a nine-month reprimand for trusting common sense over divine revelation when it comes to age limitations.

 

• The heroes that make up God’s recording of those chosen to fulfill his plan were not handicapped because of their ages. Caleb, though elderly, claimed the more difficult fortified mountain territory in the Land (Joshua 14:10–13). A stuttering Moses, after eighty years of living in a palace and then herding sheep, was entrusted with leading Israel out of captivity. Vagabond Paul would probably not have chosen a diminished crowd to speak to while being incarcerated in a solitary place to live out his last decade. But he found his voice by writing letters from prison and in his advanced age probably impacted more lives than in the totality of those people he encountered in his earlier active years.