Old Age Prepares Us for Our Next Life

My Jack Russell Terrier is only ten years old. Apparently, she has arthritis. She has a hard time getting up in the morning. She starts break dancing again soon after we give her arthritis medicine. This medicine has started to have less effect as she gets older. She sleeps most of the day. She acts like a very old dog.

I have several friends who have gotten slower as they age. Their health problems have started consuming their days. Trips to the doctor, the pharmacy and the hospital are now routine. Medical procedures and tests take up more and more of each week. I wonder if this is what they thought of as "golden years."

I believe that old age is a part of God's plan to bring us home to Himself. It is a tragedy when a young person is ripped from this life. They never got the opportunity to do much of what they had planned. Maybe God takes some of them because He is protecting them from a horrible future. I know that some of them are responsible for their own deaths. Others have had evil take their lives. The people who murder little children are of the devil. The devil hates life and wants to snuff it out as quickly as possible.

Many people naturally get older and progress to the end of their lives. Eventually, everything quits working. I have been in the room with several people when they expired. I have talked with them minutes before they left this world. I have watched them accept the ticket to the next life. There comes a point when going on is much better than staying here. They can be with their Lord or stay here in their misery. Eventually, they choose the Lord.

We would continue to hang on to this life forever if we could stay healthy and spry all of our lives. Aging takes our hair, muscles and health. It wrinkles our skin and causes our organs to fail. It stops fighting diseases and welcomes new pains. It makes our teeth start to wiggle and prevents our feet from moving so fast. It takes our eyesight and our hearing. Even our desire for eating eventually leaves us. Nothing in this world is left for us.

So, we make the trip. We take the hand of the one who is sent to retrieve us from this world and walk with him (just a term) to our eternity.

I'll miss these friends whom the Lord will take to be with Him. I had a dream about one of them a couple of years ago. I was officiating at his funeral. I got to the podium and cried. That was all I did.

However, I won't miss any of them forever. I, too, shall make that glorious trip someday. Then, I shall be with them and Him forever.

1 Thessalonians 4:17-18 (NIV)
¹⁷ After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. ¹⁸  Therefore encourage each other with these words.