Old age is no place for sissies

For the Lord takes pleasure in His people;

He will beautify the humble with salvation. Psalm 149:4

I have lots of time to consider the humble these days. I am spending lots of time with Mr. Humble “Is there anything I can to help you” Coverdale.  And really is there anything more humbling that having your wife and daughter wrestling for over an hour through changing the bedding at two in the morning?  Especially if you are drifting back and forth between awareness and making some small attempts to help out a bit and mostly being rather anxious and stiffly grasping arms and mattresses and side rails with your still-very-firm-grip.

And I have lots of time to consider this stage of life, and the absolute humility it imposes on the aged and those who care for them.  And to reread yet another time the eHow article on “How to roll an elderly person in bed.” And now the stories and sympathetically knowing looks are piling in pell mell.  This is the song of the circle of life, from the day we arrive on the planet, and, blinking, step into the sun; the counterbalance to the birthing center with Everette Tess just five weeks ago.  And all the bits of Sophocles and Shakespeare resonate with new understanding.  And the wisdom of Solomon as he contemplates a time to be born, and a time to die: I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man.

There is nothing better than to be joyful and to do good as long as we live. And to eat and drink and take pleasure in all of our toil.  And I saw people going about this business yesterday, Billy from Hotel Congress creating delicious concoctions in the lower levels of Roskruge Bilingual School to serve to the staff celebrating a year well done, and the principal José whose mission is to give his students hope, and Dexter whose church has organized sixty tutors and fixed a crucial bureaucratic glitch at 1010 E 10th, imagine, and after a short afternoon nap there were fish tacos in a downtown brewery with soaring tin roofs and mason jars full of mysteries with stories of fixing water pipes and grateful clients and maybe stories of organic coffee plantations and joining Him in His work of making everything beautiful in its time.

And most of all, as I struggle between fist and head shaking and getting affirming glimpses of Him who has done it, this whole grand finale underscores God’s love for the humble.  Somehow it is a good thing.  Stepping onto the stage of eternity with clarity and purpose: There is nothing better than to be joyful and to do good as long as we live.  

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been.

It is finished.  The curtain has been rent, and we are invited to share His glory. Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

And Pandora continues its merry way: It is well, with my soul, it is well, it is well, it is well with my soul.