Absolute Truth #3: We Are All Mortal and Live with Limitations

“The length of our days is seventy, or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow…”  Ps. 90:10

[NOTE: As the second most powerful spiritual influencers in our grandchildren’s lives (and sometimes the #1 influencer), grandparents need reminded of the core truths of who God is, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, and what has God done about, if we are to be the kind of influencers God asks us to be.

This is the third in our serious of 7 Absolute Truths we all need to grasp. There are more than seven, but these seven are critical. May God give you wisdom and understanding as you pass these truths on to your grandchildren so they will walk in the truth.]

Spanish explorer, Ponce de León, is often associated with the search for the legendary Fountain of Youth to cure his aging. On both sides of the Atlantic, stories of such a rejuvenating water were common. Mankind has always sought for some way to stop the aging process and become immortal.

It is still true today. Our culture is obsessed with looking younger and avoid the effects of aging. Anti-aging creams, cosmetic surgery, Botox, antioxidants and genetics are all modern day attempts to find that elusive ‘fountain of youth’. We don’t like to admit our mortality because it reminds us of our limitations as human beings.

Whether we like it or not, as much as we may try to live with the delusion that we will never die, deep down we all know it ain’t so. We know the clock is ticking and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

When we do face the reality of our immortality, we are forced to choose one of three responses:

1) We can despair;

2) We can ignore it and bury ourselves in one big party all the time;

3) We can face it by living gratefully in the knowledge that our lives are in the hands of a loving Father, who made us, has a purpose for our lives, and has promised us an eternity without these curses.

The last option frees to find, not the fountain of youth, but the fountain of life where there is purpose and hope for today and forever.

Besides our physical limitations, we face many other limitations in knowledge, relationships and emotions. We foolishly pursue what can never satisfy, only to discover that the feelings of emptiness, loneliness and inadequacy persist.

Nothing alters the fact that our physical, emotional, relational and intellectual limitations are real. Man’s endless pursuit of wealth, fame or pleasure as the antidote for his or her limitations, ends in the realization that this road is a dead-end. As hard as we try, the realities of disease, aging, depression, grief, fear, betrayal, and ignorance, to name a few, are outside our ability to control, but not God’s ability to heal and redeem.

TEACH AND TELL

It’s time for an attitude check…

• What attitude towards aging and mortality will your children and grandchildren glean from your attitude about life and aging?
• Are you caught in the obsession look “young”? Does your attitude embrace or devalue the meaning of aging and death as something purposeful, even an essential component of living as God’s workmanship?
• When the subject of death arises, are you able to talk about it with your grandchildren in such a way that they can understand how our mortality should lead us to place our trust in God?

GRANDPAUSE: “If men are prepared to die they are ready for anything.”  -Unknown