Elderly

Repetition aids memory; meditation internalizes. That’s why the psalmist was confident that a steady diet of Scripture would keep him from sin (Ps. 119:11). Elderly people tend to get forgetful, and they also tend to lose certain inhibitions that once would have kept private thoughts from being advertised. Observe this phenomenon and take it to heart. Your mother warned you not to make faces, lest your face would get stuck that way. And she was right. If you smile (or frown) a lot today, your octogenarian face will show it, like it or not.

Maggie Jackson made it well past the octogenarian stage. She was over ninety when we knew her—my wife and I, newlyweds, picking her up from her nursing home and bringing her to church so many Sunday mornings. She’d reminisce to us. Even though she was ninety plus, her repertoire was limited. She was getting a bit forgetful. So we listened to the same stories week after week. Her salvation as a young person; her attendance at Moody; her long and happy marriage to a pastor about twenty years her senior (he had died long ago). Whatever the story, the moral was the same: “God has been so good to me.” This statement from a lady with no family but the church, in poor health, recently moved into a nursing home.