Even to Old Age
Daily Scripture
Psalm 71:9, 14-18
Don’t cast me off in old age. Don’t abandon me when my strength is used up! … But me? I will hope. Always. I will add to all your praise. My mouth will repeat your righteous acts and your saving deeds all day long. I don’t even know how many of those there are! I will dwell on your mighty acts, my Lord. LORD, I will help others remember nothing but your righteous deeds. You’ve taught me since my youth, God, and I’m still proclaiming your wondrous deeds! So, even in my old age with gray hair, don’t abandon me, God! Not until I tell generations about your mighty arm, tell all who are yet to come about your strength.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
This psalm comes from someone old enough to feel the ground shifting under them. The writer names it plainly. Their strength is used up, and people around them are saying God has left them for good. But the psalmist doesn’t argue that their life has been easy or that they are beyond fear. What they do instead is turn to a lifetime of evidence. The writer has observed God work since he was young, and decades of watching have given something to stand. Something that a younger version of the psalmist didn’t have yet.
The psalm doesn’t move from fear to false cheerfulness. It moves from fear to hope built on memory. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann described psalms like this one as bearing witness to “the surprising gift of new life just when none had been expected.”* The hope here isn’t naive. It’s the kind that only comes from having been at the bottom before and having watched God still be there. The psalmist isn’t asking God for one more miracle just to enjoy their last years comfortably. The psalmist is asking for enough time to hand off what they learned, so the next generation doesn’t have to start from nothing.
The longer people live, the more storms they’ve been through, and the more chances they’ve had to notice how God guided them through. That accumulated evidence is its own kind of gift; one younger faith hasn’t had time to gather yet. It’s also a responsibility. What decades of watching God work have taught an older believer isn’t just personal comfort. It’s something owed to whoever comes next.
- Think back over the different seasons of your life, childhood, early adulthood, midlife, wherever you are now. Where do you see the clearest evidence that God was present, even in a season you wouldn’t have chosen? How does looking back change how you face what’s uncertain right now?
- The psalmist prays specifically to live long enough to tell the next generation what he’s learned. Who is a “next generation” for you, whether that’s your own children, grandchildren, or someone younger you influence? What is one thing from your years of watching God work that you want to make sure they hear from you?
Prayer
Lord, thank you for every year you have carried me, even the ones I couldn’t see you in until I looked back. Don’t let me grow quiet just because I’m growing older. Give me the courage to keep telling what I’ve seen of your faithfulness and give me people willing to listen. When my strength runs low, remind me that my hope was never resting on my strength to begin with. Amen.
GPS Insights
Gwyn Thomas
Gwyn Thomas, who serves as Director of Donor Relations at Resurrection, wrote today's Insights. She is a Boston native who’s happily adjusted to Midwestern life. She loves working in ministry alongside her husband Blake, a Congregational Care Pastor at Resurrection Leawood. They enjoy life with their two children, and an unapologetically large orange cat named Tuna. When she’s not chasing toddlers, she enjoys pottery, traveling, and finding new favorite restaurants.
I’ll be honest: I don’t feel particularly qualified to reflect on a scripture about old age. I’m still surprised by the first 15 gray hairs I’ve found on my head, and every time I catch one in the mirror, I’m convinced it wasn’t there yesterday. But I do understand what it feels like to look back and recognize the ways God has carried me.
Truthfully, I’ve always had an instinct to lean on and trust God in my hardest moments. The world has felt like it’s failed me more than once, and I’ve found comfort in a God who never does and who promises not to. That promise has been like a salve for me. I’ve also consistently surrounded myself with people who remind me of God’s faithfulness when I need to remember it for myself.
My grandmother comes to mind when I think about someone who came before me and exemplified her faith. She was a devout Catholic. She loved her church, and her funeral reflected that. I remember seeing so many people who knew her because of her example of service and the way she lived out her faith. But I never talked to her about her faith. I never asked her why it was so important to her and I wish I had.
Now, when I think about sharing my faith with the next generation, I think about my children. I want to make sure they know my “why.” I want to tell them about the relentless God I’ve witnessed who has given me hope when I didn’t have much of my own. I don’t have decades of stories to tell them yet because I’m still in the middle of becoming who I will be.
Maybe that’s part of what this Psalm is reminding me: we don’t have to wait until we are old to start telling the next generation what we have seen. I want my girls to know that no matter what happens, God loves me, and God loves them, too. And I want to keep telling them that until they know it for themselves.
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 123–124.
