Over the Hill

One of the things my wife bought me for Christmas was a new Bible. It’s a large-print version. For the first time in my life I am older than the President of the United States. I’m smarter, too, but that’s been true before. I am older than all but two of my many colleagues at work – at least of the ones I deal with regularly. It is the start of a new year, and I am very aware of getting older.

I was reading along in my new LARGE PRINT Bible. The best way to get all of the pages unstuck is just to read through from start to finish – not my favorite way to read the Bible in its entirety, as one has a tendency to bog down in some of the history, but it works. I was in Genesis 12 when God decided to send me a text message.

And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Just like that, in LARGE PRINT. Well, hey, you know when you get a Holy Ghost text message, you might want to stop and think about it a little. I did. I thought, yeah, and he was like 147 when he died. I’m not planning on being here that long, and even if I did, once Obamacare kicks into high gear, people like me will be headed for Greenhills Retirement Village – or, as it will be known by then, Soylent On The Green, which has a much more European flavor.

Still, I don’t think the Lord’s point is that I’m going to have to stay around for another eighty or ninety years. Abram lived a good half of his life outside of the land of promise. He was content, so it seems, to hang out in the border country of Haran for many years after his father brought the family out of Mesopotamia. At seventy-five he finally sets out to follow God with his whole heart. He traveled. He gained wealth, prestige, and influence. He associated with world leaders. He became a military leader himself and defeated an alliance of four kings. He acted as a priest, interceding on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of his nephew. He fathered a couple of sons whose sibling rivalry still troubles the world. He received a new name. He was called the friend of God, and his line led to the Messiah. It’s not a bad resumé for an old guy.

In fact, I’d say that it might be too much of a good thing for most of us. I sometimes start thinking that maybe I am willing to use my age as an excuse, more of an excuse than it legitimately is. I wonder if I dismiss some of what God is urging me to do by saying I’m just too old for it. Abram could have said that. He could have stayed around Haran. He could have left it for Lot or one of the next generation to go claim the promise and live in Canaan. It was not an easy choice, and it was not an easy life he chose. Obedience is rarely easy – peaceful but not easy.

The truth is that being old has its advantages. I don’t know if I could kick my own eighteen-year-old ass, but I do know that there is something to the saying that old age and treachery will beat youth and skill. For one thing I don’t freak out nearly as much. I don’t succumb to fear as readily either. It’s not just a lessened fear of dying now that I’ve already lived so long. I’m far less fearful of looking bad or appearing uncool. I have little fear of what people will think about me, and I have a lot less fear – though it is still too present – of failing. Fearlessness is commonly attributed to youth, and there’s no doubt that the young often believe they are immortal in a natural sense. The recklessness of youth is replaced, in the better cases, by a kind of optimistic acceptance. Cockiness becomes a settled, easy confidence. An overabundance of head knowledge gets sorted and sifted into wisdom and understanding. Older people acquire a depth of perception distinct from the often too broad view of earlier years. The chip on the shoulder becomes a big clue-bat you can whop people with when they need it.

It doesn’t happen automatically. There are plenty of gray hairs over bubble heads. There are way too many of us who never leave Haran, or high school for that matter. I understand. The hardest time in my life was when I realized that some things were just gone forever. It didn’t matter that they were of little value. The trauma was that they were gone -- that change had come, that I had changed and could never go back. The dark, clutching fingers of that depression still reach for me from time to time. Slowly, though, I am realizing that we pass through an oasis, a Haran, on the way to the land of promise. It serves its purpose of resting and refreshing, enabling us to move on. If we don’t go on, if we stay, it will not support us. It will eventually become polluted and poisonous -- deadly.

The adventure of our lives lies ahead. Our purpose and our destiny lie beyond the borders of the settled, beyond the horizon – over the hill. We’ll have to fight some battles, dig some wells, build some altars, and cover some ground, but that’s why we are here.

See, there’s the sign pointing to Canaan. Don’t you think it's writ large?