"Darling I am growing old
Silver threads among the gold"

You must have reached a seriously high age to be able to remember those words by Ebenezer Rexford! It is quite a long time for me since one of my sons first said to me "Dad you're going white" a rather irreversible colour as far as my hair is concerned. Whether we like it or not I have to admit with David the Psalmist, "I have been young and now I am old."

The question is does that make us older ones useless and forgotten and hopeless, as many people would suggest? Our world looks on age, as something to be avoided, perhaps pitied, even derided. But now for the good news! I have discovered, to my delight, that God regards old age as totally wonderful, and some of his greatest promises are made to those of us who are getting older. So if, like me, the silver hairs have arrived, I have something enormously encouraging for you. If however, you live on the young side of fifty, then you can look forward to that landmark, rather than fearing it.

The first promise God makes to those of us who are getting older is that He is going to be with us. He says this in Isaiah 46: "Even to your old age I am the Lord and to grey hairs I will carry you. I have made and I will bear, I will carry and save." Isn't that tremendous? We change - but God doesn't. "I the Lord, do not change." He will not only share in our older years, but will be there to help us.

Some of us may feel that we have left God on the outside of our lives for too long, and now it is too late to let God in to be there with us. "Not so," says God. Human age may be our problem, but it is not his. He is saying, through Isaiah, that, however old we are, he will save us. Christianity has been in danger, in recent days, of giving the impression that it is only out to attract the young. I'm glad that Jesus Christ does call young people to be his disciples, as he always did. But his call is not exclusively to them - it is to all of us. We can enjoy God's presence in our later life.

It gets better! Because God promises something else which the world around singularly leaves out. He says that he wants us to have a purpose for living in older age. Here are some wonderful words from Psalm 92: "The righteous still bring forth fruit in old age. They are ever full of sap and green to show that the Lord is upright." This is the very opposite of how other people view human life. They see life as a downward trend: there are things you stop doing as you get older. You have less strength, you are unable to walk as fast, or work as long, and even your brain cells are disappearing! But God has a different perspective altogether. He says he will renew the life in us: not necessarily in our aging bodies, but in the very depths of our hearts: He says that there can be so much beauty, so much value, as we grow older. We will bring forth fruit in old age."

You know the famous fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 where we are told all about the love and the joy and the peace and the gentleness and the goodness and the long suffering and the patience. All these things which God wants us to have are for us to develop. They are not there just to begin and come to an end. So as we get older we can become more joyful, more loving, more kind, more faithful, more gentle and even possess more self-control. Sometimes we look at people who get older and we say, "Oh, he's getting grumpy or less tolerant". There's a film called 'Grumpy old men' and the sequel to it is called 'Grumpier old men' but what God is saying here in Psalm 92 is that we can bring forth fruit in old age and that we will be ever full of sap and green. In other words, not withering away and getting brown and decayed but having the newness of His life.

Certainly when you look at some older people you realise that they are growing old graciously and that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is more and more exhibited in them. God is saying to each one of us, what is possible for some is possible for you. I can bring forth new beauty and newness of life, as you grow older.

You remember the very famous words of Robert Browning in the poem Rabbi Ben Ezra, which are often quoted at the beginning of the stanza but not at the end. Let me quote the whole of it to you:

Good old Browning! The end of life is to fulfill all that has gone before. We are called to be people, whose lives exhibit the newness and the loveliness of God, as we grow older. That doesn't mean that we've got to be rushing around like headless chickens as many young people do. That's their delight in doing that. Their joy is stuffing 48 hours into every 24 and exhausting themselves in the process. It doesn't mean to say we've got to be frenetic in our activity, it means that we've got to have a quality of life which exhibits all the growth which God brings.
I have a vine in my greenhouse. In its early days it produced lots of wonderful shoots but, as it gets older, and yes it still need pruning, but as it gets older it produces more beautiful grapes which are so tasty to eat. It produces a quality that it wasn't able to do in its younger days and God is saying to each one of us "I have a quality of life that I want for you as you bring forth fruit in your old age." How on earth are younger Christians ever going to learn what it means to grow up in Christ if they see that we have grown old and frail and wrinkly and grumpy and horrid, rather than being the lovely people that God alone can make us?

But inevitably - and we're crazy if we don't come to terms with this - our older age will eventually bring us to the point where our bodies do fail and we come to the point of dying. It's one of those subjects that not many people talk about but everybody I guess thinks about sooner or later. The older you get the more you tend to think about it.

As most people approach old age and death, it's one of those things which is so ghastly to contemplate that they either panic or despair or shove it out of their minds as much as they can. But as Abraham, one of the great old men of the Bible, grew old, this is what God promised him. You'll can find it in Genesis 15 and verse 15. God said to Abraham "You shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried in a good old age." Isn't that the most delightful way of speaking of death, to be buried in a good old age? How lovely to know God's peace at the end of this earthly life.

As we move towards this inevitability, we can draw on those wonderful words spoken to Abraham. If there is one thing we want as we grow older and approach death, we want to know the peace of God. It was Jesus himself who said to His friends in John 14 verse 27 "My peace I give to you". It is not just somebody as great as Abraham who goes to his fathers in peace, but God says to each one of us "My peace I give to you".

Jesus said to His friends at the beginning of John 14 "Don't let your hearts be troubled, trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms, if it were not so I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am." These are wonderful words for those of us who know and love the Lord Jesus, as we grow older.

If you say, "Well I don't know that" then don't panic! It is hard to realise that God wants to be around our lives to carry and save us, when so many people seem to leave us. It is difficult to see how we can produce new fruit, and be "full of sap and green", when all we feel is that we are full of wrinkles and aches and pains. And as for knowing peace as we approach death - get real!I said, 'Don't panic' (or 'Don't panic, Mr. Mainwairing', as Corporal Jones would have said on 'Dad's Army'). Because I have found a brilliant prayer for us 'oldies'. It has become my favourite prayer in the whole Bible, and can be found in Psalm 71 verse 18. Here it is. "So even to old age and grey hairs, Oh God do not forsake me." Isn't that lovely? That is for me today.

As I grow older, I want my children to say, "Look at Dad. Growing older is brilliant ('cool' would be the mote juste), because it means having God's forever life, with newness and peace." Don't you agree? Then share with me in a prayer: "Even to my old age and grey hairs, Oh God do not forsake me."