I suppose nobody ever naturally did like the idea of getting older, at least after he had left school. There is a sense of oppression and depression about it (Eccl. 1:4-5). The irresistible, inevitable onward march of moments and years without the possibility of one instant’s pause–a march that even while on the uphill side of life is leading to the downhill side–casts an autumn-like shadow over even many a spring birthday. But how surely the Bible gives us the bright side of everything. In this case it gives three bright sides of a fact which, without it, could not help being gloomy.
First, it opens the sure prospect of increasing brightness to those who have begun to walk in the light (1 Jn. 1:17). Even if the sun of our life has reached the apparent zenith, it is no poetic western shadows that are to lengthen upon our way: our age is to be “clearer than the noonday.” How suggestive that word is! The light, though intenser and nearer, shall dazzle less: “in Thy light shall we see light.” We shall be able to bear much more of it, see it more clearly, see all else by it more clearly, reflect it more clearly. We would have said, “At evening time there shall be shadow.” God says, “At evening time it shall be light” (Zech. 14:7).
Also, we are not to look for a dismal afternoon of life with only some final sunset glow, for He says it “shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov. 4:18). “More and more” leaves no dark intervals; we are to expect a continually brightening path. “The future is one wish of brightness and blessedness” to those who are willing only to walk in the light (Jn. 8:12). Just think, when you are ten or twenty years older, that will only mean ten or twenty years’ more experience of His love and faithfulness, more light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6), and still “more and more unto the perfect day” will be opening out before us!
The second bright side is increasing faithfulness. Do not confuse works and fruit (Mt. 7:20, 22). Many a saint in the land of Beulah is not able to do anything at all and yet is bringing forth fruit to God (Rom. 7:4) beyond the busiest workers. Even when we come to the days when “the strong men shall bow themselves” (Eccl. 12:3), there may be more pleasant fruits for our Master, riper and fuller and sweeter, than ever before. For “they shall still bring forth fruit in old age” (Ps. 92:14); and the man who simply “trusteth in the Lord” “shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”
Some of the fruit of the Spirit seems to be especially and peculiarly characteristic of sanctified older years; do we not want to bring them all forth? Look at the splendid ripeness of Abraham’s faith in his old age (Rom. 4:19, 21); the grandeur of Moses’ meekness when he went up the mountain alone to die (Deut. 34:1, 5); the mellowness of Paul’s joy in his later epistles; and the wonderful gentleness of John which makes us almost forget his early character of “a son of thunder” wanting to call down God’s lightnings of wrath (Lk. 9:54). And the same Spirit is given us that we, too, may bring forth fruit that may abound, and always more fruit (Jn. 15:2).
The third bright side is brightest of all: “Even to your old age, I am He”; always the same Jehovah-Jesus; with us all the days (see Mt. 28:20), bearing and carrying us all the days; reiterating His promise–“even to hoar hairs will I carry you…even I will carry and will deliver you” (Isa. 46:4), just as He carries the lambs in His bosom. For we shall always be His little children, and doubtless He will always be our Father. The rush of years cannot touch this (Heb. 1:11-12).
Fear not the westering shadows,
O children of the Day,
For brighter still and brighter
Shall be your homeward way.
Resplendent as the morning
With fuller glow and power,
And clearer than the noonday
Shall be your evening hour.