Tomorrow

 Whether you dread it or embrace it, tomorrow will come, as will the day after tomorrow. Even if you’re no longer here to see it, most everyone else will be because time marches on with a single-minded focus.

If life were a play, I’d be past the intermission already, well into the second half, all things being equal, not quite at the final act, but you never know. Life is fickle, and how long we get to live on this earth before we are called to the great beyond is fickler still. Navigating the twilight of one’s life is a tricky prospect. While some people spend all their lives saving and planning for their last five years on this earth, never enjoying anything beyond having a secure retirement, others have no plans in place and figure they’ll get by one way or another.

Tragically, more often than not, it’s the planners that die three weeks from retirement, and those who live like they were hippies on a commune live well into their eighties. Maybe it’s the stress. Perhaps it’s the human body’s way of shutting down, seeing retirement not as some gift worth looking forward to but as a cessation of usefulness.

People don’t like the idea of being a burden, and truth be told, neither do I. It’s refreshing and encouraging to know that God will never see you as a burden, no matter how difficult the journey gets. You will never be a burden to God. Some things are worth meditating on, and that statement is one of them.

Not only does God say you can lean on Him if you need to, but He also offers to carry you if and when you are no longer able to walk. He offers to carry you not in return for monetary compensation, not if you can pay or if you do a reverse mortgage to afford the help, but because He wants to, can, and love drives Him to make the offer, no strings attached.

They say it’s a young man’s game, and that tends to be true most of the time. If you take a nineteen-year-old and a septuagenarian and put them in a five-mile race, the nineteen-year-old will likely win with time to spare. Some things, however, require an experienced hand, and nothing less will do.

God is not an ageist. If you study the Word diligently, you realize that Moses was eighty when he led God’s people out of Egypt, and Daniel was in his eighties as he stood in a pit surrounded by lions. John the revelator was pushing ninety when he received the revelation of Christ on the isle of Patmos. No spring chickens there, but what they did was undeniably impressive for someone of any age.

When God uses someone and calls them into service, their age is irrelevant to Him. God is only concerned with obedience, and the older we get, the more we learn to obey the voice of God in all things. When I was younger, I’d have to be told twice to obey once. Especially when it came to something that would alter the course of my life, I admit I kicked against the goads a time or two.

I think it had a lot to do with what I saw as my life’s trajectory and what God saw for it. I always lived under the assumption that once my grandfather passed, my duty would have been completed, and I would be released to go and pursue a career. I was his interpreter for over a decade and did it joyfully, but I never saw myself in ministry after that chapter of my life was completed.

God had other plans, and being in my early twenties, I thought I knew better until He convinced me I didn’t. It wasn’t a gentle rebuke. That ship had sailed, and when God gives you an ultimatum, you tend to get the message clearer than you would otherwise.

But why wouldn’t you want to be in ministry, or have a calling for that matter, when people are beating bushes trying to get anyone to confirm that they have been called? To begin with, people who clamber for callings have never been around anyone with a true calling to see what is required, what it takes out of them, and how persistent the enemy’s attacks are throughout.

Whether for Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or any of the Apostles, a calling did not mean a life of ease and comfort. A calling meant a life of hardship, persecution, and being hated by everyone because they were tasked with shattering the illusion that all was well and only calm seas were in their future.

As far as being in ministry, let’s be honest; to be what is deemed successful in the world’s eyes, you have to be more of a politician than anything else. Not so much kissing babies, although some preachers do it, but making allowances where the Bible doesn’t, turning a blind eye to things that should be rebuked, and generally being forced to make compromises because, for the most part, the sheep aren’t looking for green pastures, they’re looking for permission to rut in the mud.

If you don’t give them license to sin, they’ll just go to the mega-church down the street, and if enough people leave, your elder board will have a talk with you about esoteric things like vision and inclusion, but what they’re really saying is stop preaching the Bible. Otherwise, we’ll have to close our doors.

It’s not a rosy picture, but it’s an accurate one. Yes, there are exceptions, and for that, I am grateful, but generally speaking, this is the way of things, and to pretend otherwise is folly.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.