And I'm looking youth-in-diapers in the eye. In fact, that might even help. Just kidding.
Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward, we must believe in age. - Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos
I like this quote from Sayers because it stresses a truth that is totally lost in the youth & beauty cult that is America. In Christ's economy, to grow older may very well be to grow more beautiful. At first this takes place "merely" in your spirit, and then, in a blinding flash at Jesus' return, the body will catch up. The tireless sanctifying work of Jesus will burst outward as we become, in a whole new sense, "spiritual."
At that moment we'll realize that to think of mere atoms as permanent was to play a child's game. All the time we were worrying about health care and IRAs, the spiritual was the truly eternal, invincible, indefatigable thing. "Physical" is a mere subset of spiritual--and I'm sure that week-long basketball games in heaven will bear this out.
So to believe in "youth" down here is hopelessly nostalgic. To believe in age, in the eternal sense, is to embrace not only wisdom but strength, beauty, and the perfection of Jesus--eventually unfolding in a new world of divine opportunity.
1 comments:
Beautiful, Ariel. The attempt to reclaim our youth will always be in vain...pun clearly intended. The inability to accept the aging process by many is a sign of some level of emptiness in their own hearts, an emptiness only Jesus can fill.
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