The Change of Life We Live

The older we get, and perhaps this is the only time we take special note of this, we are nothing like what we started out.

From infancy to adulthood we go through so many physical changes. The colors of our eyes and hair can change. The baby fat gives way to lean tissue, and comes back again! The bones mature and set into place and often we are nothing like that infant that wooed everyone! Something that might look normal at one age, looks abnormal at a different season.

Like grief stages, we migrate through all the psychological changes, you know, the Terrible Twos, and those awful Teen Years where we learn to fight, hate, love, and race to adulthood long before we are ready because our hormones are in total control!

Along the way we take chances.

Some we realize, and others we have no clue about the potential danger or outcome. Change does not quit at a certain age. We keep Living through the Changes!

Change Is Certain

It’s an almost daily occurrence where we experience change and fail to recognize the migration from yesterday.

In what ways? Emotions, behaviors, habits, along with the usual BMI and other metrics that doctors care about very much! We experience that fine line between love and hate, happy and sad, up over down.

Some go through an identity crisis! I remember specifically being warned of the 7-year itch as the one to watch out for! Nesting instincts turn into the Empty Nest syndrome several decades later. Then there are the tepid steps into retirement, and finally free like a bird but tethered to the 401k.

If it is true that our personality has been established and affirmed by the time we start school, then the most startling change we notice of others, and ourselves, are our physical changes.

I found some photo’s in a seldom noticed file and started watching the physical changes of a lot of people close to me. It’s almost as if the end result is a Jack-in-the-box Surprise! You never see it coming, even when you’ve been warned about it.

It’s like my grandparents, as an example. It seems when I first started remembering them they were already nearing their 60’s. My age bracket today. Their hair was mostly gray, the fine figure of their younger self is hidden behind their modern identity. I will never know them as a young person. Pictures? Yes. Experience? No.

Why am I writing about this?

The closest thing that will engage me in this decade’s long view of aging, is watching my kids and remembering their introduction, growth and what they are today. If I live far enough into the future then I will see them become what my current age happens to be. I’m now older than my dad when he retired from Alaska and moved back to Texas. That was just yesterday, right? Well…his youngest is now over that big 6-0!

Well. Age has the joy of being able to look back over a longer period of time and do some self-analyzation that a younger person cannot experience. If the younger folks would know how important their actions are, then maybe they would just listen for a moment to someone older that would love to help point the way to aging!

This aging understanding and a God-given message I delivered to my church one Sunday have kept me thinking deeper and further about the meaning of life.

We need to be in the Game of Life for the Long Haul!

The message has been bobbing around in my mind and spirit for a few days, and I’m sure it’s broader than a 60-minute presentation on Sunday. The thought grows and heads down pathways I’ve never considered. Yet, it has also reaffirmed my thinking that there is a true picture of the self that makes the ending just as important as the beginning.

Looking back, better choices could have been made that cannot be easily corrected at my current stage. Eyeballing the future, I wonder about the decisions that I will get to make, versus those that will be made for me that I will have no option but to follow.

This means I have “right here” and “right now”
To face the challenges of living forward
Because I cannot live backward.

This does not mean thinking and reliving the past is a wasted effort. My past is what made me into who I am today.

Right? Maybe…

If we think the “past” is what others poured into us, then it may be true we are a product of that effort.

But I am a thinker…and I love to analyze…and you never know what those two actions will produce! Life has actions that we respond to, and we react according to who we are at the moment. Life has a way of changing us. Something is always happening!

Add to these sudden life events, we have flashes of insight that migrate us from one way to another way. Call it intuition, second sight, sixth sense, or the “gotcha” moment, we are able to facilitate the past into a wholly different future.

Briefly, and again…

I think of the Apostle Paul. He was a Jewish man with a focus in a certain direction. He describes himself in terms that all Jews would have been able to comprehend: Circumcised. Israel. The tribe of Benjamin. Hebrew. Law. Pharisee.

But his actions were to persecute the church as his insight into how to live his life according to the Law of God. (Philippians 3:5-6) In the history book of the church, Acts of the Apostles, Paul is wreaking havoc against the church (Acts 8:1-3, Acts 9:1) back in the days when he was called by his family given name, Saul.

This was perhaps a little extreme. Right? Yet, the religious leaders worked hard on getting Jesus off the scene. It was only natural for Saul to continue the effort. Maybe. But it seems his change to this path probably came when the first martyr, Stephen, was stoned.

What Was His Push In Life?

What was the push that made him so upset with the church? Maybe it was Stephen’s declaration of the One God of Israel.

But he, being full of the Holy Spirit,
gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God,
and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said,
“Look! I see the heavens opened
and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”  
(Acts 7:55-56 NKJV)

This was blasphemy! This was not of God! This went against the Law! Stone him! As the deed was done, the coats of the perpetrators were laid at Saul’s feet for safeguarding.

This had to of changed him and send him down a path of destruction!

After he has completed his deeds in Jerusalem, he prepares to follow the fleeing Christians to Damascus, now in modern-day Syria. Saul has another insightful and blinding moment. As he was completing his several weeks’ journey:

As he journeyed he came near Damascus,
and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven.
Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him,
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”
And he said, “Who are You, Lord?”
Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”
(Acts 9:3-5 NKJV)

Suddenly! That voice speaking identifies himself as the one who commissioned the church he was seeking to destroy! Life-changing! Revamp your thoughts! Apply all your knowledge toward a different revelation!

It changed him forever.

His new revelation? His new direction? He became the greatest church planter in the New Testament!

But he struggled with his past. Over and again he seems to be somewhat full of remorse about the actions of his past. (Philippians 3:7-9, Galatians 1:13-14, 1 Corinthians 15:9) But he sums up his past and focuses on the future with this famous quote:

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended;
but one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14 NKJV)

Notice his focus… I press forward!

Pressing Forward

His life was forever changed! Even as he enters the final stages of living, he recognizes his responsibility to reach out to the younger ones. His son in the gospel is Timothy, and the last known letter of Paul is written to him.

Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me,
in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.
That good thing which was committed to you,
keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.
(2 Timothy 1:13-14 NKJV)

And their job is to transfer knowledge to others. (2 Timothy 2:2)

Summation

If we live our life with a long view, then we reach others that are following our example. We teach and train them to teach and train others. So that the important and foundational things are not lost with a single generation.

Generational living. That’s the Change of Life we live.