Are you afraid of aging? Many are and billions of dollars are spent on methods of wiping away the years and
weight loss. One such commercial gave me a "light bulb moment"
recently. I don't even remember what the product was, but a man had
lost significant weight and he said, "Now that I have lost the weight,
I am a better person." Wow! That hit my consciousness really hard! So
how much you weigh determines if you're a good person or not?
For years we have seen our obsession with the physical
grow exponentially. Physical fitness - daily workouts, vitamins,
organic food - and all the while our bodies keep ticking away in
inevitable decline. Each decade brings a new mindset: invincible
accompanies us until we turn 30. And then our eyesight diminishes, then
the Snap, Crackle,Pop of our knees, and eventually, our minds go. But
this applies to the physical, not the spiritual.
It
is possible to get better with age! Paul said, "Even though our outward
man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." (2
Corinthians 4:16) I think it goes without belaboring that this is
dependent upon our willingness to actively put on the mind of Christ consistently.
Man - and woman - are triune beings - a reflection of The Triune God. We are made in His image in this way. The physical
is the least important, so it is at the bottom. Next comes the soul
(emotions, will, and mind). At the top is our spiritual. And yet it
seems most of the time people are trying to improve the body and the
mind!
According
to Marketdata Enterprises, the annual revenue for the diet industry was
over $30 billion dollars way back in 1990. (It's much higher in 2008,
yet our obesity rate keeps rising each year.) And that's just on weight loss! Who knows how much is spent on either products or procedures to look more youthful?
Aging
physically and mentally does bring trouble. But when we are stripped of
everything that props us up - wealth, independence, health, dignity,
beauty, or all of the above - we are left with more and more of God. It
does not matter old we get, it is never too late to dig deep into God's
Word and invest more time in our spiritual well-being. The question we
must all answer is
do we want our payoffs now or later?I, for one, want to get more spiritually fit. Then I can say, with confidence, "I am a better person."
I will not be afraid of getting older physically! How about you?
(c)2008
April Lorier |
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LORIER - So. California. An award-winning poet, inspirational author
and speaker. A survivor of both child abuse and adult domestic abuse,
April inspires women to be all that God designed them to be! She first
gained recognition as a children's rights crusader while successfully
fighting for the passage of the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act
(CANRA), which was signed into law by Ronald Reagan.
