Last Saturday, July 28, I celebrated the beginning of one person’s lifelong journey of faith, and consoled another person whose brother’s lifelong journey had come to an end. In the early afternoon I witnessed the baptism of Karma Metzger in Santa Rosa Sound, with Rev. David Morris and Rev. Stuart Worth administering the sacrament. As Karma came out of the water, all who attended reveled in the beauty of the day, the place, and the symbolic act of beginning life anew. Then in the late afternoon I spoke by phone with Dr. Augusta Simon, whose brother, Luther, passed away at age 66. As I shared in Augusta’s sorrow and burdens, I gave my gratitude to God that Luther, who suffered multiple diseases his whole life long, was now experiencing a new fullness of life in the presence of our Triune God.
The passing of our lives seem to accelerate as we get older. When we are young, we think we have near eternity to live our lives, but then as we pass the milestones of 30 and 40, it seems like life is getting away from us, and by age 50 and 60, we are looking backward more than forward. Those of us in the later decades of our lives should offer counsel to those in adolescent and early adulthood about making early decisions on how to live one’s life for God and not for ourselves. What a blessing it is to receive that wise counsel as a young person and thus to be motivated to offer the same wisdom to those younger than you who are approaching independence.
May we treat faith with the same preciousness that we treat life, and may we seek to pass our faith along to others even more than we desire to prolong our own earthly lives.
To His honor,
Doug