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Last Updated on : Saturday, October 11, 2014

 

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selah

 

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Chapter 10

Climbing Higher


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SOME regretfully speak of growing old and going downhill but we should rather think of it as climbing higher and higher, and of getting nearer the things we long for. What a comforting promise for those advancing in years - for the aged believer is this: "Thine age shall be clearer than the noon-day; thou shalt be as the morning." In the words of a beautiful old poem, we ask:-

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Who would exchange for shooting blade the waving, golden grain?

Or, when the corn is fully ripe, would wish it green again?

And who would wish the hoary head found in the way of truth,

To be again encircled with the sunny locks of youth?

For though in truth the outward man may perish and decay,

The inward man shall be renewed by grace from day to day;

They who are planted by the Lord, unshaken by their root,

E'en in old age shall flourish still, and still bring forth much fruit.

it is not years that make men old; the spirit may be young

Though for three score years and ten the wheels of life have run;

God has Himself recorded in His glorious Word of Truth

That those who wait upon the Lord, they shall renew their youth.

And when the eyes now dim and weak shall then behold the King,

And ears now dull with age shall hear the saints victorious sing,

And on the head now hoary shall be placed the crown of gold,

Then shall be known the lasting joy of never growing old.

 

The friends of youth disappear like the summer flowers, and we seek their places in vain, for like the dew that sparkled but a moment on the flowers, they have vanished for a while: but God is still the strength of our life and our increasing joy. As youth resembles the rose newly opened in early summer, so age is represented by the ripened fruit and waving corn. "The righteous shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger," or, as we read in Job "Thou shalt come to the grave in a full age, like a shock of corn cometh in his season."

Of an aged brother it is recorded that "as the years fled, hope was still resplendent, faith brighter and brighter, and that love divine took possession of him more and more. At times he could scarcely restrain his emotion as he listened to some sentence that mirrored the mind of the Eternal, that brought in bold relief, the richly-studded promises set in the unfading richness and beauty of its literary flowers and fruit. In his face could be seen a love-lit radiance suffused with joy that flung itself back upon the speaker." And such should be the character of every golden sheaf. A. Hopkins.

 

 


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