I have been young, and now am old;
Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken,
Nor his descendants begging bread.
He is ever merciful, and lends;
And his descendants are blessed.
Psalm 37:25-26
A friend about my age (I turned 54 this week) said to me recently that he doesn’t feel any different on the inside. He still has the same energy and ambitions as when he was in his twenties. I can’t quite say the same about the energy levels— sometimes yes; sometimes no— but I do feel like the same person on the inside. Obviously though, our experiences change us in some ways, and it’s likely adversities that have the greatest effect, for good or ill.
When the psalmist wrote in Psalm 37:25, “I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken,” he didn’t mean he had never seen the righteous suffer. Suffering and being forsaken are not the same thing. As Job said in Job 2:10, “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” Adversity is to be expected.
Adversity can make us strong but it can also tempt us to move away from God. If sometimes we feel forsaken, we might need to check our righteousness. Often when we say God has abandoned us, it’s really that in our adversity, we abandon Him. We choose to “curse God and die,” so to speak (Job 2:9). This is not righteousness.
Neither is it righteousness if we get angry because we have to to stand at the counter three times longer than expected because a young cashier doesn’t know how to properly process a return. It isn’t righteousness when we criticize young parents who we feel are too “gentle” without offering to help them or attempting to understand their point of view before expressing ours.
When Paul told Timothy, “Let no man despise thy youth,” (2 Timothy 2:1 KJV), he was advising Timothy to stay humble and respectful so that older people would not resent him for being their teacher. We want young people to be respectful. Surely it should also be understood, when reverse-engineered, that older Christians are not to despise those who are young and trying to do their part, however imperfectly they may seem do it.
This is how the Father loves each of us.
Most people older than me are retired or nearing retirement, which means most working people are younger than I am. The people who teach my children, who provide my medical care, who preach to me on Sunday mornings– most of them are younger than I am. God expects me not to despise their youth, not to be jealous of it, and not to criticize or disrespect their work simply because they’re younger and may have less experience in some ways. Usually this is very easy for me, partly because I’m basically a nice person, but also because the truth is that most of the young people I run into are very smart and very good at their jobs.
But when they’re not, my reaction of patience or impatience is a greater reflection on my character than their job performance is on theirs.
Thankfully God does not despise us, young or old, nor does he forsake us. Yet, in this fallen world there will be adversity. Sometimes people will fail us, whether in a check-out line or at church, whether they’re younger or older. Being old doesn’t automatically mean we are righteous. Attending church for 50 years doesn’t guarantee it either. The righteous must also be merciful and generous and a blessing to those who are younger.
No matter how we feel on the inside, no matter what adversities we must endure, our righteousness should increase as we age. Let us be thankful for every day that God gives us to become more like Him.
The days of our lives are seventy years;
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
…So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:10,12
by Christie Cole Atkins
Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for being so patient with me. Help me to extend that same grace to the people around me and to stay humble as I age. I thank You for the older people who taught me how to live for You. Show me how I can be a blessing to the younger people I encounter day by day, and help me to learn from them as well. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
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