When Young and Old Need One Another

I had a church member recently pass along an article to me titled, "The Vitality of Youth, the Wisdom of Age: When Young and Old Need One Another," by Steve Estes, from the online magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America.  The article is actually a revised and adapted version of a sermon on Proverbs 20:29, "The glory of young men is their strength. Gray hair is the splendor of the old."

It is an excellent reminder of the need we have for one another, whether young or old.  The following is an excerpt that demonstrates this well:

Each age is better at something, right? Then a clear corollary is that the generations need each other. Imagine Pentagon generals — guys in their 50s, 60s, and 70s — sitting around the table in the war room, planning to rescue American hostages captured by Somali pirates. After they develop their wise plan, these generals drive to the airport, suit up, don parachutes, and off they go. Arriving over the target, they jump, floating down to rescue those hostages. Things won’t turn out so well, will they? The glory of young men is their strength.

Now conversely, imagine that Navy SEALS — men skilled at parachuting and pirate-busting — are running the Treasury Department. That wouldn’t be good. (Well, considering how things have been lately, maybe it would be an improvement. But you get the idea.) We need each other; that’s why God has made people of different ages. God wants the generations to mix and to feed into each other.

I sometimes walk into a convenience store to buy a cup of coffee. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become invisible to anyone behind the counter in their teens or 20s. They see I’ve got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. To them I don’t exist. But when I walk into my church, kids talk to me. Teenagers joke with me. Singles in their 20s slap me on the back. I love it, because in that room God does what this passage is talking about: He smiles on young and old alike and knits them together. So I ask you who are young: Do you realize what a gift you are to older people? There are people in your church and neighborhood who all week long see nothing but wrinkles and gray hair — until they brush shoulders with you. And to those who are older: Even though you may be intimidated by the young, there are young people who think “older people don’t even know I exist — they don’t care about me.”

God pushes us toward each other. As we mix, I think He’s telling the young: “Don’t be impatient with older people. Don’t despise them because they can’t get around.” He’s saying, “Have respect for older people.” And to the old, I think He says, “Don’t pine for the good old days when you were young.” Where does He say that? In the Hebrew parallelism of the verse. Often, in poems with this parallel structure, the second line offers the better of the two options. In this verse, the second line says that old people have gray hair as their glory. In the poet’s mind that’s a step up from the glories of youth.

But to both groups, I think the Bible says, “Don’t be preoccupied with your age.” Rather, here’s what God says in Jeremiah 9:23-24: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the strong man [young and tough] boast in his strength. But let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and he knows Me."

To read the entire article, click here.