Greatest Contributions After Age 65
Old age is dreaded by almost everyone because it usually means loneliness, physical decline, and a retreat to inactivity. Some people tend to lose their enthusiasm for life and spend too much time in fruitless reminiscing and self-pity. They feel like “Old Jimmy,” an elderly gentleman George Mueller often told about. When this man was asked what he did all day since he had retired, he replied, “I just sit and think, and sit and think,...and sometimes I just sit!”
That’s getting old in the worst way -- ceasing to live before we die. History records that many people made some of their greatest contributions to society after the age of 65.
- The Earl of Halsburg, for example, was 90 when he began preparing a 20-volume revision of English law.
- Goethe wrote Faust at 82.
- Galileo made his greatest discovery when he was 73. At 69.
- Hudson Taylor was still vigorously working on the mission field, opening up new territories in Indochina.
- And when Caleb was 85, he took the stronghold of the giants (Josh. 14:10-15).
God never intends for us to retire from spiritual activity. The Bible says we can “still bring forth fruit in old age.” Even as Jesus kept the “best wine” for the last at the wedding in Cana (John 2:10), so He seeks to gather the most luscious clusters of the fruit of the Spirit from the fully ripened harvest of our lives.
You may be sure God wouldn’t keep you on this earth if He didn’t have a worthwhile ministry for you to accomplish. So keep on serving the Lord!--H.G.B.