Half-way to "As good as dead..."

I read a line the other day that made me laugh:
"Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened."

I felt that one because I turned fifty at the end of June. I have been getting older all of my life, but turning fifty was the first time I felt I could justifiably embrace the adjective: OLD. 

The week of my birthday, one of our Bible studies was working through Romans 4. Paul describes Abraham, at one hundred years old, as being so old that he was "as good as dead" (Romans 4:19). One of the newer believers looked across the table, smiled, and said, "Mitchell... you're turning fifty. You're halfway to 'as good as dead.'"

I have always hated math.

Years ago, just after college, I visited a dentist in Lubbock because my teeth were in rough shape. After looking into my mouth for about ten seconds, he pulled back and exclaimed, "What has happened!?"

Seriously, he did. And before I could even answer, he continued, "It doesn't matter. We're not looking to the past. We're only looking to the future." That was a very expensive series of dentist visits. 
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The gospel does not invite us to deny the past. It redeems it. Nor does it encourage us to live there. The apostle Paul writes, "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal..." (Philippians 3:13-14).

Paul wasn't saying he literally forgot his past. He remembered it well enough to call himself the chief of sinners. Instead, Paul refused to let yesterday define tomorrow because Christ had already secured his future. And that changes everything.

The world spends enormous energy trying to look and feel younger. The Christian is free to become older. Every gray hair, every ache, every laugh line is another reminder that this present age is not our home. We are called to enjoy God and His good gifts in life, but ultimately we are pressing toward a better country, a heavenly one, where death itself will be, well, dead. 

So, yes, according to TJ, I'm halfway to "as good as dead." But because of Jesus’ finished work, I'm closer to seeing Him face to face. And that's a journey worth celebrating.