What Do Retired People Do?        

                                                    (At least one such person)

Last Sunday when I was greeting people in church, one man ask me how I was doing and then, what do you do, knowing that I was retired for some time. I responded,”That is a good question. When you don't have to go to work anymore, what do you do?” He recognized the issue and problem, and agreed that one needs to find new things to do with an abundance of time available when one no longer needs to “go to work”.

We then talked of some things I do, like spend a lot of time on the computer with the myriad of things one can find there to do. He seemed to understand and did not show scorn over that. How nice! And then when I mentioned that we have a large back yard to occupy time, and also that we have several rentals to maintain, he seemed to be even more understanding.

This conversation led me to think of what all I actually find myself doing. To think through this, I don't know whether it is better to list thing by importance to me that I do, or by how much time I spend doing them. So let me just list some things I do beside the above mentioned, and what it may even mean that I do the above things.

While it is most impressive  to working people that I maintain property and manage several rentals, that actually takes very few hours per month unless there is a change of renters and a house has to be updated.  And working outdoors also is mostly a summer job, and then I get tired physically after only a half hour or an hour of hard work- even if it is mostly walking. Besides it makes no money!

I get credited a lot if I say I work with Hospice, sitting with old people in their final days. Yet this has usually occupied no more than several hours a week and sometime none for a month. Most valued by most friends of mine but little time spent per month on an average. Sometime persons I sit with never even know I was there, or would not remember it 30 minutes later. But there also are most rewarding contacts with patients and families who appreciate our support...

Something that takes more mental and Spiritual energy than physical is keeping up with about 6 families in Belize that were close to us when we were living there. They call once or more per month explaining their needs and concerns and I have to decide the best way of helping them, which often includes sending money for the basics of life, including food and medical. And how much counseling can you do over long distance telephone or texting?

Few understand what all I can do on the computer that is interesting, amusing, and some even outgoing for others. Games are a challenging past time, and also entertaining and even helping to keep my mind sharp. Reading news headlines, I always do, and follow up with items of interest. Sometimes I feel I travel around the world even before our family devotions in the morning. (More on praying later.) Of course there is email, keeping me informed some about the church, friends and much irrelevant stuff I just erase. Equally informing or more so is Facebook, where I have to scroll down a lot to find anything of interest, but I also get news from family and friends that I would never get otherwise. It is my best source of info from some nieces and nephews. Some time I share my “wisdom” in responding to comments and news items.

Then also the computer is the writing tool for current thought which may help me clarify my thinking and keeping me informed of what I believe! Then there are my blogs which number over a hundred entries by now, where I share matters that may challenge many, which I also value. It is a ministry as I check in on the many “page views” responses of people from around the world who check in on each writing. Sometimes I have to pray for people in Korea, Russia, and anywhere else in the world who may be mulling over my writings. So the computer offers many opportunities to socialize, and exercise my mind and reach out to challenge many. Certainly time can be wasted on the computer but it offers such a variety of opportunities for the good in entertaining, mental exercise, and outreach. Presently I am also writing my biography, including much writings about our 25 years in Belize.

I mentioned prayer in connection with blogging, and news around the world gives much basis for praying intercessory every morning. It often feels we travel around the world in praying, dipping down in Belize, Bangladesh, Puerto Rico and many other places. Nearby are also neighbors, renters, the church and many more. Abroad are missionaries who need our support in prayer, including some of our family anticipating mission service. We pray for the work of the Spirit around the world moving people to seek the true God.  It gives me ambivalent feelings to sit there in the living room in the peace of the morning with relatively no worries of my own, no crises I am facing compared to that which I know millions of people are struggling with. I wonder how I can worship God and be thankful in a world where I am exempt from the hardship millions of hopeless refugees and famished are struggling for survival. And even Christians many places live in greater peril of their lives than ever.

So there are many things for an older person to do. In fact there are so many, including distractions that one can daily wonder if one is using the time wisely. I often think how I may feel in a decade or two when many things possible now may be more difficult, and there is no going back to the good old, old days of my present life.                                                                                     October 22, 2017

                                  Eighty Things for Which Life Is Too Short

Life is too short to

(Excuse numbering)

71. Spend half your earning life paying off the house you live in.

72. Spend more years of pursuing education than you will find useful in your life.
73. 
    
74. To wait to really know your children until they are grown up.

72. To spend long weeks just to make a better living.

72. To wait until you are secure financially to find out what was really God's plan for your life.

76. To neglect learning to enjoy nature as God's wonderful home meant for you and everyone.

77. To give second place to God when you expect to spend eternity with him.

78. To fail to show personal love to your spouse every day. (if you marry)

     79. To not observe how your parents went before you into their aging years; you will be there before you realize what happened.

80. To realize how short life really is until it is almost gone.

                              

                                Eighty Things I Still Wonder About (Just curious)

71. When I read of the amazing discoveries of astronomy on the vastness of the universe and the great age of stars, I wonder how anybody can imagine it all just happening by itself without an even greater mind and powerful Being behind all of it, still far Greater than we can imagine.

72. I still wonder if heaven is anything like people have thought of in history- whether it is more like here on earth perfected, or almost totally different in many dimensions. Will there be animals in Heaven?

73. I still wonder if there are any perfect marriages. If any think theirs is, are they bored, or supremely happy.

74. I always thought of myself as being of perhaps slightly above average in intelligence but some tests have suggested perhaps a higher IQ than I ever thought of myself. I wonder. Well, so what?

74. Is hell actually what many have thought as like an eternal, burning fire? When I stood before a blazing brush fire, I wondered if any God could have the will to cast any person in there. I wonder if it may be any longer than just until the person has died. To realize there is no turning to God might be hell.

76. Will we be spirit beings in Heaven, or more like the present? Will we see God physically or Spiritually?

77. I wonder if God has been pleased with my life, or if he just forgives and loves me anyway.

79. Will all people be judged alike by God, or does he have a much more complicated way of looking at people than the way we do.
80. 
    
81. I wonder if God will grant my prayer to take me to him easily as I pray, or if it will be like a long examination before I can go. And when?

80. I wonder if I should just relax and trust God and quit wondering so much.

                              Eighty Things I Want to Do In My Remaining Days

71. Take care of myself, my wife, and my home as well as I can.

72. Follow through with my great grandchildren and be as close to them as I can, hoping that as many as can will have memories of me as they mature and grow up.

73. Be active and reaching out to people close to us outside of our family, like neighbors, tenants, and our close Belizean friends to encourage them in every way I can and encourage them in the Christian way of life.

74. To pray every day for many- missionaries, especially those in our families, for new believers, persecuted ones, young church leaders, for our own congregation, for our government leaders, and for God to foil the ways and plans of evil doers who cause much harm to people, as well as for God's comfort to impoverish persons, refugees, and others who suffer.

75. To seek to be good stewards of our wealth and use it for the good of others as well as for ourselves.

76. To encourage a mission interest and focus tor our grandchildren and be supportive to those sensing a call to serve in mission and church ministries.

77. Continue in a writing outreach through blogging and other writing beyond what I have done and make use of other social media as I find ways of doing a broader writing out reach.

78. Enjoy the outdoors as a praise to God, sharing with him the joy of his creation and wonder of beauty, growth, and the cycles of life.

79. Keep my wife as happy as I can.

80. Keep growing in faith and knowledge of the wonders of life in a relationship with our Heavenly Father.

   

            Eighty Things That Might Interest My Grandchildren (and Great Grandchildren)

71. What life was like when I grew up without electricity (let alone electronics and telephone) running water and without an indoor bathroom in the winter, or cars to get around.

72. How much I enjoyed living in Belize for 25 years, in the tropics with so many friends, a relaxed culture, a thousand fruit trees and so much more- like living on the Caribbean shores most of the years.

73. How little I missed American living in all those years- except for family, and why I did not miss anything else.

74. How we traveled through Mexico 7 times and sometimes had amazing experiences where it seemed we had angels watching over us in strange situations that could have been extremely difficult or worse.

75. To read my biography if I ever get it down to size and on e-book- if I ever do.

76. How I follow a regular morning routine that various little throughout the week: make coffee, use the bathroom, check the computer until coffee is ready; and then while drinking it, sit on the couch while Loretta reads a devotional, and then we, I especially, may talk until Loretta is a bit tired and we pray, especially interceding for family, missionaries, our grandchildren abroad. Also for our renters and Belize friends, the government, and wisdom for the day- all these, and nearing each weekend, we pray for our church and churches around the world. Also that God would act in many situations- like with oppressors and the persecuted, and a few more things personally, not always in the same order. Then we bring in the newspaper and it’s time for breakfast, for me at least. All these every morning with the order varying a bit.



77. Our daily life is mixed with a lot of freedom to do what we want to, with Loretta often in the back yard weeding while I am on the computer with email, Facebook, news, interesting articles, games and sometimes music on YouTube while reading. The demand to work at rentals sometimes disrupts a lot of retirement freedom. O yes, it also gives us opportunity to share our livelihood (financial) and conversation with about 5 single parents in Belize about once or twice a month.

78.Can you imagine what it feels like to have 29 direct descendants by the year you turn 80. Names I can remember, birthdays, not so good.

79.  How interesting it would be if you would all note the most important things that happen to you each decade- how interesting your story would be by the time you reach 80!



80. How it feels to be 80 years old when everyone thinks you're much older than you feel.

                                                       It Will Not Come Near You

Each morning as we sit on the couch for our morning devotions we contemplate situations in the world that we are aware of from the news, or things we just know are that way. This morning it was news that fires in California are threatening the homes of hundreds in addition to those who have already been driven away, some 20,000 people, and already 1,500 building have been destroyed. Recently, of course, Houston, Bangladesh, Puerto Rico, and African countries caught in drought, many famishing, have also been heavy in the news. In rehearsing these many kinds of dire needs, many producing great anxiety, dismay, or hopelessness in the hearts of people, we feel burdened and wondered how we should interceded for all these things.

But our praying always starts with thanksgiving for the many blessings of our lives where it seems that God has favored us with so much good and so little to be anxious about. We have no continuous crises of food, shelter, finances or health. And we have some confidence our country will survive. How then how do we bring together all this abounding blessing for us in the face of innumerable calamities and hardships in the world? It almost makes me feel guilty or at least embarrassed that we have been exempt from the world's curses and instead have had security rained upon us all our decades. We have only had occasional reverses which we always pulled through with God's help and have few anxieties today.

Is all this somewhat similar to the experience of David where he wrote:

      A thousand may fall at your side,

      And ten thousand at your right hand;

             But it will not come near you. Psalm 91:7

Yet I have been haunted sometimes by difficulties we have had in the past: a house fire that destroyed our home years ago; struggling finances for many of our first 25 years of marriage; and marital adjustments that never seemed to be fully resolved. And we know that sometimes Christians have fatal traffic accidents. Can I believe David's words as a guarantee for the Christian for all times? Or did he write this at a time of peace within and recognition that God is always near him and is watching over him?

As we are entering “old age” for sure by now, it is encouraging that we can rest assured with David that He will always be with us, even as the Shepherd Psalm, the 23^rd, assured him. We can be confident that even if we are living in a world in turmoil, we are secure in God's care for us. It makes me humble that it seems we are singled out for God's special love- but that's just how He is. So with a grateful hearty we can intercede for the dire needs of the world and pray for God to act by his Spirit and through his people throughout the world, to bring hope and knowledge of his love for all and to all. We pray that all needy persons will have hunger for a “real” God and will find truth and hope in him and have his blessing for life as we do. In His own ways also he can release people of their misery and supply relief for many or all.  

                                               50+ Dead, 400 Injured in Las Vegas

How do we respond to this breaking news this morning? Most of us are horrified as this information comes across the media. On second thought, I realized that it happens every day in our country, and even more around the world. Only it is in scattered events, or far from where we live, usually. We knew that there are deranged people in this world, or people with hurts and prejudices that motive  various persons. to atrocities. What was specific here was that so much happened in one place, for reasons that are totally unknown as I write this.

We can have any of a variety of responses if we are moved by publicity. We may also be reminded as I am, that this is only one place where such violence has happened. The wider question is, how do we respond to the wider problem of violence around the world, which we may be oblivious to, because it is not "news"?

We listened to the news a while sitting where we  have our morning devotions. Perhaps the news just strengthened our usual prayers, that God would be searched for  his comforting love, to be found by a new reason to seek him. The needs of people anywhere, like also Puerto Rica and Houston came to our minds also as  places people have extra reasons to turn to God for comfort. Bangladesh often  comes to mind with weather tragedy much worse than in our own country. I often think of  tragedy and desperation, even as famine which God tolerates as perhaps pains of travail of God, before persons are born to a new life in him. So we pray that God's Spirit would come and suggest to people that there is a God they can turn to for help and comfort.

Tragedy doesn't really make sense to us, yet we persist in seeking meaning. The Christian cannot in the Spirit of Christ be indifferent. Can we do more than pray? If and where we can find a way, certainly we want to. I am just responding off the cuff to all this as I am inclined to do. We cannot pass off the suffering in the world as just natural events beyond our feelings.