News

I don’t remember exactly what age I had reached when, it seemed, everyone began addressing me as “sir”. Sir is not a bad word. It can be a title of respect. The word, Sir, becomes much improved when granted because a king or queen touched one on each shoulder with a sword. No such luck for me!

No, I don’t recall what age I was when it became common for people to use sir when speaking with me. I know it wasn’t age thirty-five. Probably in my late 50’s or early 60’s, I would check out at the grocery, step up to the pharmacy window at Walgreens, or ask a Target sales clerk a question, or someone opening a door say, “After you, sir,” the word sir would be used in reference to me.

There are some gifts of aging. One is the at least seemingly treatment of respect by others with use of some words like sir. Another is the experience gained along the way and the relationships built. Sometimes I find myself surprised at the number of contacts I have made at Arizona State University simply because of my long association with the university and its people. I know whom to call to find answers, and, occasionally, even to get things done.

Some experiences as we age we would rather do without. The longer we live, the more people whom we care about leave us. I remember talking with a 100 year old pastor in one of my congregations, wishing him a happy 100th birthday. He was less happy than us celebrating the birthday to be 100, he told me. Most everyone he had ever cared about was gone. It felt lonely at the top of the age pyramid.

I wonder if God ages? In human numbers, God has been around a long time. “Infinity and beyond”, to use the phrase of Disney’s Buzz Lightyear. Somehow, I don’t think God has aching joints, reduced vision and heart burn. The Christian faith proclaims God became one of us in Jesus and knows what it is like to be us even to the point of suffering and death.

Jesus, however, was in his thirties when he died. Yes, that was getting up there in years back in the day, but still not quite geezerdom. So, does God know what it is like to be us as we become elderly? Does it matter?

Questions like this don’t keep me awake at night, but they do pass through my feeble, aging, mind. We Christians do also proclaim that God works in and through the human flesh of those around us and in and through us. That doesn’t necessarily mean God experiences aging as we do, but it does mean there is no age without God. There is no age that God cannot or does not use us to speak and to act.

You and I will have to leave it at that as we age. We will have to be content with God’s continual and continuing presence throughout life. Content? Actually, what more do we need?

We may not address God as “Sir”, but think of some of the names attributed to God: Lord, Father, Emmanuel, Savior, Comforter, Prince of Peace, and so on. Yes, what more do we need?