Where Am I – and Going?

Having written most of my biography and perhaps still having, who knows, how much of my life ahead of me, how could I possibly write the last chapter of my life? I may have 15 to 20% of my life ahead of me, or much less. It is something I often guess about. Knowing a bit about statistics, yet aware that statistics are only averages, I have no indication of where I will be in contributing to longevity statistics. Yet I gather that I am more likely to have between 5 and 10 years left than 15-20 years, considering that I am at 81 and a half presently as Christmas approaches this year. Thus I am interested in writing a present stance without much of any guess how much time I have left.  If I follow one ancestor, I would have about 19 years. But her husband, well I am already 11 years past his demisal age.  So here I am and where I am going as far as I can guess.

I am keenly aware that I have a bit less strength and motivation for activity than 5 years ago, yet I feel that in most ways I am still very much, almost totally, the same person as I always was. It's an easy deception to think I still am who I always was. Most marked of this ambiguity is that I think that it should be so easy to do something like repairing the house or working on a rental property, yet I don't want to to it for reasons I can't justify. It seems I am lazy, contrary to my life long view of myself and unacceptable to my ego. So I am sitting uncomfortable in a no man's land of feelings and motivation vs obvious abilities.

There is also another ambiguity of how old I really am. People knowing my chronological age can easily classify me among the old people, Yet to myself I never got there. I am still practically where I always was. I frequently have to double check on how people see me and who I really am. It is rather complicated because some treat me socially nearly as if I was “normal” just like them. Or am I deceiving myself in thinking so? It come down to the fact that I don't really know who I am, or how old I am supposed to be. It seems I am caught in a self-image of being between a little old and actually old. Is there something like middle old age? If that is a category, I will tolerate myself thinking so.

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A third ambiguity of my age is that I never had any speed bumps on the way- no point of change like a disability where I had a reason for acting old..No health problem that slowed me down. Not even a retirement age threshold. Perhaps the biggest jolt was moving from Belize in 2011, but even that move was gradual over period of years where we just stayed longer each year until we did not go back any more. It just documents that I have little gauge to show where I am as I have no idea when and how I got here- except one thing- I didn't die on the way. Perhaps death will also not happen at one point; we just gradually fade away. Not too bad a way to go.  Tongue in check? Perhaps slightly.

So here I am in aging. Where, I really have little handle on. I just know I have some excuse for being a little less active which people are willing to grant me. I also have less motivation for expanding my life, like investments and updating our house beyond minimum upkeep. Even having a real garden is a little too much. Mowing the lawn is OK- for the summer. Winters I look out and watch the snow falling, and sit in my study reading and daydream like at this writing. O yes, all my other writing that I am trying to manage and preserve for another generation and many generations, so they know who was here for a while. So where am I going?

Judging from the past 15 years I am going nowhere fast, but then not assured of the opposite either. Yet there are no clear health bases for thinking anything is going to shift rapidly in my life. Any abrupt change in health would be a departure from  my past style. Yet I have little assurance that the future might not be much different from the past. We have often prayed that our final years would be without great dependency. At least that is in my mind when we pray for health all our days. May God grant it.

SEVENTY OR EIGHTY THINGS FOR WHICH LIFE IS TOO SHORT

Life is too short...

1. To complain about your spouse’s housekeeping when you can just as well do it yourself.

2. To wash the dishes 3 times a day, unless you have visitors, free labor, like children or grandchildren, if it is only you and your spouse.

3. To try being a millionaire by working or striving.

4. To worry about what you don’t get done in a day.

5. To keep up with changing fashions when classics are always in style and dignity.

6. To wash your car every week.

7. To do 115% on a menial job when 95% of perfection will do well and in half the time.

8. To make children do things your way when it is not a matter of morality, safety, or efficiency.

9. To spend a day without reading God’s word, a newspaper, and some pages in a good book.

10. To lie in bed when you can’t sleep when you can get up and do something significant.

11. To quarrel with your spouse just to win an argument.

12. To be distracted by grudges longer than 60 seconds.

13. To wear yourself out so you can rest or take a vacation.

14. To live for yourself, even if you tithe your money.

15. To skip a day without prayer.

16. To maintain an acre of lawn.

17. To worry about yesterday or tomorrow.

18. To neglect your family for anything.

19. To take everything seriously, especially your own opinions.

20. To worry about your failing faculties.

21. To remake your spouse or anyone else into your image.

22. To ignore a child’s cry for love and withhold support and a hug. .

23. To lavish love on yourself with selfish entertainment such as TV when there is someone right there to love, like a child trying to crawl onto your lap, begging for your attention.

24. To make excuses when the real reason is, you just don’t care enough to act.

25. To live the unexamined life.

26. To hesitate when the obvious is before you.

27. To wait to enjoy your family until they are a bit older

28. To watch programs like Feed the Children and World Vision, and grow old when others can’t because you only watched the programs and did nothing about it. .

29. To mope over your failed dreams when you can pray and let God do it a better way.

30. To strive after wealth which does not satisfy.

31. To put off until tomorrow to do the good you should have done yesterday or today.

32. To wait for a better day to share the good news of Jesus.

33. To live without priorities and goals.

34. To lose sleep over what might have been rather than considering insomnia a gift of God for fellowship with Him.

35. To worry about the rainy days at the end of life.

36. To grow older with desperate needs around us and delay in doing anything about them.

37. To repay a fraction of our debt to God for his habitual goodness to us.

38. To live for the day you can retire.

39. To hope you will feel more like helping the poor tomorrow

40. To stop sowing good deeds until you see the fruit of your work.

41. To let secret sins stifle your faithful service to God.

42. To stay depressed over strained relationships.

43. To take a long summer vacation ever year when you need only half that amount to touch base with family and church to rejuvenate.

44. To stand there buttoning a long shirt front when you’re chaffing at the bit to get on with life.

45. To let months and years slide by without filling them with activity of eternal consequences.

46. To allow other’s negativism to get under your skin and hinder your service to God.

47. To take a long vacation when you are restless to be immersed in meaningful activity of service that is waiting for you.

48. To let marriage difficulties hang and not seeking understanding and resolution.

49. To live with personal moral dilemmas and bondage.

50. To let would be visitors wait at the door just because you have had enough visitors for a day.

51. To worry in the night about matters you know you can solve better by sunlight.

52. To neglect hobbies involving nature and the great outdoors by which you can share God’s joy of creation.

53. To be ignorant and unobservant and miss half the show of life.

54. To be concerned only with news and not reflect the meaning of happenings

55. To let another year go by and not be 365 days ahead of the past.

56. To remember, record, and photograph every interesting and special thing that happens.

57. To memorize all your ancestral connections back to your original immigrant, unless it comes easily.

58. To limit yourself to one culture when the world is full of colorful and curious cultures.

59. To coast along in the life span with only your own age group and ignore the energy and optimism of youth and the wisdom and contentment of the elderly.

60. To follow one’s own plans and miss the best way of God

61. To lie awake at night idly thinking when one could be up and doing something constructive in the environment of the home, the mind, or God.

62. To be patient with an unconstructive or unfruitful life.

63. To retire from life before God takes you away.

64. To start doing something good until you have it all figured out and everyone approves.

65. To save for a rainy day when it is flooding all around you right now in the global village.

66. To only look back without a vision for the future.

67. To see the years slip by without knowing what happened. (What did happen, anyway?)

68. To have any hobby that consumes a great deal of time before you are in wheel chair.

69. To spend most of your life making payments on your house.

70. To spend any more time dreaming up more of these philosophical ideas.

      

UPDATED AT 80 YEARS

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 To wait to really know your children until they are grown up.

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

75. 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.

               7 Things Happy Couples Do Daily

1.        Kiss- to boost your self-esteem

2.                 Hug- to decrease stress

3.                 Listen- to build trust

4.                 Cuddle- to boost your immune system

5.                 Forgive- to clear negative energy

6.                 Laugh- to boost intimacy

7.                 Say “I love you”- to live long together

      These 7 things are small actions but will deeply

       strengthen relationships when done daily.

      From “Power of Positivity"                     

                                                      Is God All We Need?                                            

I am a bit uneasy when we sing songs that affirm that God is all we need. It seems to be saying on the surface that God himself is our only support and commitment in whom we have total faith, which seems pious and devoted to God. But it seems to ignore we have needs that are met through God's ways and not through him alone in praise, worship or trust and commitment. Let's explore how God has set up the support we all need which may not be from him directly as the songs seem to assume and imply.

When God made man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, man's relationship to God was free and unspoiled and we assume they talked to each other freely. Yet God said that it was not good for the man to be alone by himself; and so he made a woman to be his counterpart to fill a need he had created in man. It wasn't enough for God to be God with a perfect relationship with man. Man needed a person next to him who was more like himself.

It also was not enough for the couple to have each other. They needed to have the joy of creativity God had created in them. Thus God enabled them to have children. So he fulfilled the nature of his own creativity by that ennoblement of sex and procreation. .

He also placed them in the Garden. They needed an environment. He set it up and then they were to care for it themselves.  Ever since then man has been caring and perfecting his environment so that today we have cities, houses, and many beautiful things. People shape their setting at more than necessity because of their need for perfection in their environment, more as God had created for them.

So more than man being sufficient in relating to God, he also needed a human element for completion of his needs, and the ability to reproduce. Then further, the drive to create the best world he could to live in. Man was not satisfied and still isn't content to just have a relationship with God, even though restored in Jesus. Christians as well are never satisfied with just having God, as if he met all their needs and interests, as some of their songs may imply or idealize. God wanted more for man then simply being man’s only support, to be satisfied with only a relationship with him. So he created him with many ways related to his fellow humans and environment. We need a lot! That is how God made us. Is that why we try to come back and sing that all we really need is God?  Kind of an over-correction. Perhaps it would be more correct to sing that God provides a way for all our needs, and be ever grateful for that.

                                             What is Salvation (For)?

It seems to me salvation in the Christian faith may be emphasized in 3 or 4 ways. Individuals, congregations and denomination emphasize one or more of these ways which follow the tradition of any of these groups. While we cannot insist that only one is correct, it seems to me we should be reminded to examine what our options are and see if we as believers should consider if our emphasis of salvation corresponds to Jesus' life, teaching, and the life of the early church and NT writings.

A basic meaning of salvation is to be saved from our sins and sinful life with its consequences. Some churches emphasize this aspect so that every service must help persons in the audience to know how to be saved and to having an “invitation” for persons to make a public stand- perhaps literally for Christ and repentant from sin. This is to ACCEPT Jesus as Lord and Savior. The point here is that while this is certainly important, it  is only one option of emphasis to experience salvation.

A second option is to assume that the church's main public stance on salvation is to worship. When we are in corporate worship or in personal ”devotions” we worship him with thanksgiving and surrender ourselves to him  This may be the stance of the saved, at whatever level of understanding or maturity the worshiper has come to at any point. Commitment is assumed but not focused on. To give God the glory is the meaning and chief expression of our salvation.

A third focus may to be a part of a fellowship and a commitment to that fellowship and to live out the Christian life in the cooperate life of the church. Believers have so much in common, and their commitment to each other and the establishment of faith is paramount to salvation. The Amish may be the best example of this concept of salvation. Unity is very important and pattern and specificity is an expression of them of being saved. Yet assurance of salvation is not important, in this understanding but being a loyal obedient church member is the best one can do, trusting God for our eventual salvation. When you join the church as a member, you are moving toward full salvation by God's grace. 

A fourth understanding of salvation and expression is seen in working out one's love to God and commitment to him by being in service in the world. The goal is for all people in the world to know God's love and accept the life and faith which we have from our Lord Jesus. If “God so loved the world that he gave his only son” then the highest repression of being children of God is to give ourselves in love to the world so that they “will not be lost but have eternal life. The typical expressions of this nature of salvation are in witness, missions, and service to humanity. It is expressed in the belief of being “saved to serve” as the basic expressions of our salvation. If you can keep your salvation to yourself, it is very narrow and self-centered and hardly real.

These four options of chief emphases are not mutually exclusive  but illustrated so that a choice can be made on how we may best express the meaning of salvation as we find it in the teachings of Jesus, the “Acts of the Apostles and the NT writings. The forth option, which is the most drastic for the church and believers, assumes all the others, but spells out a perspective  that makes the other come in line to accompany the Salvation of the world which is the central function of the church in the pattern of God's love for the world. All of the first 3 expressions of salvation are supportive to the end purpose of God in saving us. We are not saved just for own sake or to have a good life in the fellowship of the church, but to carry out the purpose of God in sending Jesus into the world- to save the world.

     

When one seeks to help the church really be saved and live out salvation in the fourth dimension, it soon becomes evident that the church need to be greatly overhauled in all its expressions and functions. Worship is affected.. Preaching is different. The outlook on the world is different. Is the best we can do to just shift emphasis gradually? When someone affirmed our years of service in Belize, I responded that we were only doing what everyone should be doing, only in another place. This writing is to set us to thinking what salvation is and what we are saved for. This needs much exploration 

                                                         Clingy or Mature?

Sometimes it seems to me that people express a feeling that is considered holy, or faithful of trusting in God and clinging tightly to him for every step of their lives. This seems to me to be the position of child who feels insecure unless she has hold of the hand of a parent. Or a child that is comfortable only when in the arms of his mother. While this may seem pious as a matter of devotion to God, it seems to me, perhaps as an older man, that it is a somewhat immature position for a Christian.

A person learns a whole lot in life on the will of God, whether or not he feels the hand of God. God is always there. God has given us much knowledge of his ways and will for the lives of his children. He keeps on giving wisdom, to use that knowledge, in the pursuits of our daily lives. An example is that of this morning, as we were contemplating sending money to a family in Belize that had contacted us for help. In fact, two single mothers had requested help in the past day. What to do in light of bills here that are due early next week and we do not have money for all that and any good amount of money for the needs of our friends in Belize. What we decide to do, depends on our knowledge of these situations and wisdom, and our yieldedness to do what we feel in their best interests and in our situation. Certainly we could borrow money to meet all present needs and requests. But is that what we should do?

It would be easiest if God would just tell us plainly without question what do in many situations in life. Then we would know! But has he not given us a mind to use, and many experiences to draw on, as well as the counseling of others when needed? Somehow, it seems God just doesn't want to make all decisions for us, even though he certainly could and could communicate the best answer to us if he would desire. Many people want to have some kind of hotline to heaven, some sign of knowing God's will, perhaps a feeling in the body, or even the “heart”. Doing what feels right. This may be good, but at times we have found that we still ended up where we would not have want to come to. For us, to have a sizable home equity loan plus credit cards ,now with elevated interest- we certainly would not have chosen quite this place in our finances, had we seen everything 10-15 years ago.

I have wondered sometimes, if God led us, how did we get into this situation? It is part of being human, to us to follow our convictions and common sense, which may still get us into unenviable situations. My confidence is that even if we get ourselves into any wilderness of uncertainty in the paths we choose, we can still depend on a faithful God who will always be watching over us. It wasn't that we should have fearfully clung closer to his hands, but that we can venture forth in the way he has called us and then be confident that he will never desert us. Thus we can use the experiences we have in a life of walking along side God, or following Christ, and discerning the way to go by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit within us. We are free to venture forth into the world, confident that God will always be within reach and protecting us in his ways for us. Perhaps he will not make everything clear or sensible to us, but certainly he will never desert us as we trust him maturely as we follow him in all of life as we venture forth in the light of our experiences and knowledge.

                                            HOW WE BUY (Or How We Decide As Couples)

There are three criteria that persons use in deciding what to buy on any item: Quality, economy, and aesthetics. Take clothes for example. When you buy pants or a sweater, or what ever. Are you most concerned about how long it will wear, or how attractive it is, or how much it will cost? Certainly there is usually a combination of interests in the three criteria. For some persons, one will dominate where as for another person a different one will be most important. It will also depend on what you are buying. If a woman is buying a dress, how it looks is dominate usually with durability and cost secondarily. If a man is buying work pants, durability ranks above attractiveness usually, with cost also important. But buying a car may find a couple divided on what to buy: to buy something economical to use, or in fashion? Or does the record of repairs of such a model matter, or the present condition of the car matter a lot?

Which criteria prevails or dominates is also dependent greatly on parental influence and personal interests and probably often gender. If your parents came through the Great Depression and you grew up under that mentality and memory, economy may be very important in most things. Perhaps initial costs may be more important than durability as survival in the short run was the focus in their day. Aesthetics had little influence in those days of practical survival.

Economics has another influence when there is plenty of money around. Sufficiency allows for cultivation of aesthetics. For example, when there is money lying around, one can buy tasty food (aesthetics) beyond practical nutrition, (quality). One can also excel in various arts of music, entertainment, and art. Here durability technological quality may be as important as aesthetics if money is no problem.

From these examples, it is easy to see why a husband and wife may have difficulty in shopping together. There are of course gender differences in styles of shopping: the wife is likely to shop aesthetically,  while the man will cling to his purse [economy] except when he wants to buy something. Window shopping may be appealing to a woman’s aesthetic interests, but when she likes something, costs may appear to take back seat to the husband who may not have the same aesthetic taste or interest. The wife may want to buy something for him also for which he senses no need as he measures needs by still durable materials in his possessions, and not as much by now nice something new may be. However gender generalities are not consistent.

It is likely that some couples may compromise buying in order to “keep peace in the family.” The husband may be content to spend more on eye glass frames and his preference on durability may take back seat to her aesthetics. She may also allow him to buy used clothes at Goodwill- if they don’t look too bad by her tastes, although she would like him to buy new stuff. Yet sometimes compromises are not that simple if they hold different criteria strongly. If he feels their budget is strained, he may object strongly to her buying something for aesthetics sake beyond quality and necessity. For the woman, necessity may be spelled psychological- the need to do something for her self, which to the husband may be a category incomprehensible. Then the strength of wills may prevail before a decision is made. It helps to be understanding.