How to Glory in Getting Old

“The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.” – Proverbs 20:29

You know you’re getting old when you can injure yourself sleeping. I used to only be able to fall asleep on my stomach. Now, if I happen to roll onto my stomach for twenty minutes during the night, I feel like I loaded a moving truck of sofas using only my back. My physical strength (which was a limited source of glory when I was twenty-two) is breaking down.

Modern Western culture, now augmented by the acceptance of euthanasia, values old age much less than other cultures that were more in step with the Bible (Leviticus 19:32). The Bible teaches that physical fitness is a mere shadow of spiritual fitness. “While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”

Wisdom Comes Naturally With Age But There Are Degrees

Young men glory in physical strength because they can see how their usefulness, power, and ability to do things is greatly improved from when they were children. Their increased strength multiplies their capacity to impact the world. Old age, rightly approached, can offer the same enjoyments. It’s good to keep this hope in mind as your visible capacities diminish.

Contrary to popular belief, you really can look forward to getting old. And this isn’t just talking about your mid-career flex, but old. Retired, grandfather, falling-asleep-sitting-up-old. The question is, how do you make the most of this stage? This proverb implies that the glory of old men is, in a sense, being old. How does that work? Time and age give you a better perspective, a different way of viewing life, and more steadiness of soul. You will be less shaken, less surprised by what you see, and more sure of who you are. The Bible calls us to press towards those goals now, in order to enjoy them more fully later.

There are natural advantages of physical strength that accrue to every man in his twenties. But not every young man is a professional athlete. There are natural advantages of wisdom that accrue to men who are over sixty-five. But not every retiree has good counsel. Just like young men can walk about with a silly swagger of strength that’s really only come as the result of being their age, old men can possess a silly pride of wisdom that’s also misplaced. Hopefully you are less impulsive at seventy than you were at twenty, but there’s much more the Bible would hold out for us.

Knowing Jesus grounds you not only in what you’ve seen over the past several decades, but in truths that have existed for eternity (John 1:1-2). There’s insight in God’s Word that makes sense of the world when nothing else does (Ephesians 1:9-10). There’s a steadfastness to God’s love that holds you up when every other hope disappoints (Psalm 33:22). Wisdom is the expected, but not exclusive domain of old age. No matter how old you are, you can spend time with God and in His Word to accumulate those spiritual gray hairs now.