In 1968 a scientist discovered a six-hundred year old seed necklace in an Indian grave. He planted one of the seeds, and it sprouted and grew. Although the seeds had been dormant for six hundred years, it still had the potential for life. Maybe you have been a Christian for years and have been spiritually dormant for most of that time, but now you would like to be productive. You desire to be fruitful. (…) I have good news for you: it’s not too late! You can begin right now. Bow your head in prayer and tell God you want to cooperate with his spiritual growth plan for you. He will provide the power to change your life.
Rick Warren
Rick Warren, God’s Power To Change Your Life, 2006, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, p.232
“It is not the amount of years in your life that counts, but the amount of life in your years.”
Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1900-1968), U.S. statesman and delegate at the United Nations
I heard this true story: A woman was asked ‘What is the best thing about being 104 years old?’ She replied: ‘No peer-pressure!’
Window sticker seen on the back of a sports car, driven by an older person: ‘I’m not an O.A.P. I’m a recycled teenager.’
You know you’re getting older when…
You wake up feeling like the morning after but you haven’t been anywhere.
Your knees buckle but your belt won’t.
You turn out the lights to save money and not to be romantic.
You sink your teeth into a juicy piece of steak, and they stay there.
Anon.
Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
Isaiah 46:4
Once you’re over the hill you pick up speed – same for life as for a bicycle! So do everything you can to keep on climbing the hill for as long as you can. Don’t retire and put yourself out to pasture. Keep working. Continue to use your talents to serve others. Share your knowledge and experience, don’t file it away. Look after your diet. Take regular exercise. Socialise. Have interests and hobbies. Keep climbing by always having something worthwhile to do.
R. Ian Seymour
The fear of the LORD adds length to life.
Proverbs 10:27
“Age is mostly a matter of mind. If you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.” – Mark Twain (1835-1910), American novelist and humourist
If you have left your dreams behind,
If hope is cold,
If you no longer look ahead,
If your ambition’s fires are dead –
Then you are old.
But if from life you take the best,
If in life you keep the jest,
If love you hold;
No matter how the years go by,
No matter how the birthdays fly –
You are not old.
H.S. Fritsch
Asked why he began studying Greek at the age of 94, Oliver Wendell Holmes replied, “Well, my good sire, it’s now or never!’
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his “Characters of Men.”
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimer, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when he was eighty years past.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882 (from Morituri Salutamus)
“The first half of our lives we are romantic. The last half we are rheumatic.”
Vance Havner, author
Ageing is God’s way of keeping us headed homeward.
When asked how old she was my grandmother used to say, “I’m as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth.”
R. Ian Seymour
“You know you’re getting older when it takes more time to recover than it did to tire out!”
Milton Berle
The words ‘a chest of drawers’ take on a whole new meaning as you grow older and find yourself constantly trying to stop your chest from falling into your drawers!
“Only when your memories are more important to you than your goals are you old.”
Nido Qubein
As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point in the wrong direction!
(Irish Proverb)
You know you are old when you have lost all your marvels.
You know you are getting old when actions creak louder than words.
You know you are getting old when you are told to slow down by a doctor instead of a policeman.
“It is never too late to become what you might have once been.”
George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880), English novelist
I recall reading a story in a scientific magazine years ago, that told of the discovery of an ancient urn at an archaeological dig somewhere in Egypt. In the urn where several seeds still intact after centuries of storage. The people studying this find planted some of the seeds as an experiment. To their shock and amazement the seeds grew! Centuries old and neglected, but with the proper environment they still came to life. It is never too late to grow.
Jim Cathcart
Source: Jim Cathcart, The Acorn Principle, 1998, New York: St Martin’s Press, p.22
“The cure for age is interest and enthusiasm and work. Life’s evening will take its character from the day which has proceeded it.”
George Matheson, blind hymn writer and poet
Before you know it, you’ll soon have more years behind you than ahead of you, so make every one count.