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I think every family has one, that favourite ‘Uncle’ Jannie, or Johnny, or maybe Frank who is just a painful person to be around.  You dread those unavoidable family gatherings where you will cross paths with this dear soul.  The conversation will revolve around, how bad things have gotten in the country, how this generation is a bunch of lazy bums that doesn’t know what a real day’s work is, how none of the new parents in the family can control their kids and if they’re really ‘spiritual’, how wild and crazy the music in church has become these days!!

We all know of people like these, and we mutter to ourselves about how they just never aged well, how they never took life in their stride and never really saw the joys in life as they went along.

As always, it’s easy to point a finger at someone else, but what kind of a future are we building for ourselves, right now, that will take us down a different ‘happier’ path??

What you are now is only perpetuated with age.  If you are happy, carefree, love to travel, be with people and see the world now, you will probably enjoy this when you are older.  If you are concerned for your personal safety, always worried about your next rand or dollar, or wondering how you’ll ‘survive’ another month, this is probably what your old age will consist of.  What you do, think and say now, you will only do more so, as you age.  You will not turn into a free-spirited world traveler miraculously at the age of 65, if you don’t even want to leave the borders of Pretoria now!!  

This is all just practical stuff but the Bible speaks of older men and older women and gives us some good advice in Titus 2.

“Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love and in steadfastness.  Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine.  They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” Vv. 3-5

There are others, whom we have had the privilege to know over the years and I can’t help think of men like R.T. Kendall and others who have grown old gracefully.  I think the one major key to their lives seems to be their THANKFULNESS to God for everything in their lives.  They just exude a kind of on-going gratefulness for even the smallest details in life, giving God the glory in all circumstances, carrying on with some type of physical activity, spending time happily with friends and family and realizing in the end, this is all that matters anyway.  The illustrious careers will fall away, the money will come and go, the popularity and recognition you so desire will wane; but being ‘sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness’ can last a lifetime!

Plan for your old age now, live life wild, daring and grateful now and you can be sure you won’t end up like your favourite Oum Frikkie or Tanie Zeldagard!!