IT was just the other day while shopping I noticed I was paying more attention to the pavement I was walking on then the display in the shop windows. I pondered over this for a moment and realized I was being so careful about slipping on the uneven tiles that I didn’t dare look up, “You’re growing old Bob,” I said to myself and pondered over that not too happy thought till I chanced to read this article by Douglas Mac Arthur:
‘Youth is not entirely a time of life; it is a state of mind. It is not wholly a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips, or supple knees. It is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigour of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life. It means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease.
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul! Worry, doubt, self- distrust, fear and despair…these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. Whatever your years, there is in every beings heart the love of wonder, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing child like appetite for ‘what next,’ and the joy and the game of life. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt. As young as your self- confidence, as old as your fear.
As young as your hope, as old as your despair. In the central place of your heart there is a recording chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long you are young! When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the hope of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then and only then are you grown old!’
Ah General McArthur you sure put life back into my weary legs. How many lovely display windows I wondered I had missed while looking down at the ground? How many people had I not greeted as they passed me by wondering why surly Bob continued to stare at his feet? A woman asked Robertson McQuilkin, “Why does God allow us to get old?” Robertson replied, “I think God has planned the strength and beauty of youth to be physical, but the strength and beauty when growing older is spiritual. We gradually lose the strength and beauty that is temporary so that we’ll be able to concentrate on the strength and beauty that is forever!”
So it’s a different strength and beauty we should be building as we get older, a strength that will give us a spring in our limbs and a beauty that will glow, reflecting the God we walk with..!
