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 The Heart of the Matter
by Don Anderson
Relational shifts occur in the healthiest of marriages, families, and friendships as we mature. The upheaval is more pronounced when the person retiring hasn't maintained solid connections with spouse, children, extended family, friends, and God. Such a person's life may be shortened. Statistics indicate that divorced people have a significantly higher death rate than their married counterparts. The same seems to be true for lonely, relationship-barren folks.
Dag Hammarskjöld said: "What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear."
Robert Frost said: "One aged man-one man-can't fill a house."
As Tennessee Williams poignantly put it: "When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone."
By contrast, people who reached their late eighties and early nineties in the retirement communities where we ministered nearly always had a strong network of family and friends.
At the heart of it all is love. The kind of love that stays put in the storm of demands placed upon it. Living out such love is the first goal that will help us run the last laps of life well.
As we show our love in our relationship to God, His Spirit produces in us the love capable of standing the test of time with our spouse. Then love is extended to our family, friends, church, and the rest of the world. Therein lies the rub, for love among seniors and extended to others by seniors is sometimes missing.
Paul tells the Corinthians: "At any rate there has been no selfish motive. The very spring of our actions is the love of Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:14 phillips).
We do too little loving. Of our wives. Our husbands. Our children and grandchildren. Our relatives. Our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our friends, neighbors, and the unsaved world. We do not love long enough, strong enough, or without strings.
Yet believers are commanded to love throughout scripture. Jesus said in the upper room, just hours before the cross: "Now I am giving you a new command-love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. This is how all men will know that you are my disciples, because you have such love for one another" (John 13:34- 35 phillips). "And walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma" (Ephesians 5:2 nasb). "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and every one who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8 nasb).
Real love-God-honoring, gut-wrenching, self-sacrificing love-is the hallmark of the committed Christian life. It is a product of the Spirit of God, who indwells every believer.
An obstacle blocking many Christians from bearing the fruit of love occurs when they grieve the Spirit by sin or quench Him by saying "No." The fruit will not manifest itself.
The apostle Paul talks a lot about love. It is one of the first subjects in his letter to the Philippians, and its theme permeates the entire epistle. When he wrote to the Philippians, Paul's situation wasn't too different from that of a modern retired adult. Reduced income, restricted physical choices, the possibility of death-Paul experienced all the negatives of the "golden" years while imprisoned.
He took his lumps and losses, but he never stopped loving. We can learn a thing or two from him.
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