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circling questions

Last night in our mid-week Bible study Pastor Mike used a reference verse that always bugged me when I was a child. The verse goes something like "Honor your father and mother and you'll live a long time." (yes, I know that's a far cry from a direct quote, but that's the gist of the passage.)

That verse always put me in a quandary. I wanted to honor my parents and follow God's command, but I did NOT want to live a long time. Our church was blessed by a multitude of old people, and a good chunk of the visiting we did was to elderly widows whose children lived far away. Living to be old never appealed to me in the least. I always debated whether or not I should disobey Mom and Dad every once in a while so my life wouldn't be as long as I feared it might be.

After church I was sharing those thoughts with someone who has also wondered about those verses, and they came to this conclusion: to not want to live a long time is to essentially tell God we neither appreciate nor care about the very life he has given us. I had never thought about it in those terms. When I think of old age I think of limited mobility, loneliness, pain, lack of independence, sadness, confusion, entrapment, and fear. In my depraved mind, I don't think of old age as glorious or wonderful or as a gift. And yet, isn't that what it is? Or is it? I think old age in its original form might not be so bad, but in our broken world it seems harsh. And yet there are young people who have a harsh life.

sigh...the breath of God...it sounds like circular reasoning to say it is a gift, and you want to obey God to make the gift last longer, but you also won't the gift to end so you can be reunited with its source....is this what James is talking about when he says a double minded man is unstable in all his ways?

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