Have you ever considered that many of the grandest things in this world are old? There is something to be said for those things that are new and young and fresh. But don’t we all have a certain level of respect and a special kind of awe for what is ancient?
Consider the gnarled old oak with the sapling that grows beside it. Both are marvels of God’s creation, but it is the old sentinel that draws our eye and captures our attention. We consider all it has seen and all it has endured through the years or centuries. We imagine it springing from the soil when our historical heroes walked the earth and imagine it standing not only through our lifetimes but also those of our parents and grandparents. It evokes a certain kind of wonder within us, and rightly so.
Consider the towering mountains whose peaks have been battered by winds since the earliest days of creation. We may give a glance to a newly formed hill, whether raised by man’s work or earth’s movements. But it is the mountain whose rocks have been scoured, whose top is white like the hair of the aged, and that has stood firm since God spoke it into being that makes us feel our own smallness and youth.
It is good to see the light of our sun, though the sunlight that reaches us is only about eight minutes old. We marvel to see the light of the Pleiades, which left those stars during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, or to see Kepler’s Supernova whose light must have been cast into space in the earliest moments of creation. That ancient light moves us in a way new light does not.
We may casually remove a new book from a shelf, but we will put on gloves before we gingerly remove an ancient one to leaf through its brittle pages. We might hang a new painting in a child’s room, but the old ones are given pride of place and are displayed where they can be seen by all. It’s the oldest objects in a collection that make a museum stand out and that compel people to visit.
There is a lesson to be learned. If the time has come for you to be old, don’t be ashamed of your age, for you are simply joining company with many of the grandest things in all the universe. You may have cause for concern if you are older than the stars, the mountains and seas, or the classic works of art or literature. But until then, know that your age simply ushers you into the assembly of what has stood the test of time. And if those years have been spent pursuing wisdom and righteousness, your gray hair is not a mark of shame but “a crown of glory”1 that grants you membership in the assembly of what is grandest, what is most respected, and what is most treasured of all.
- Proverbs 16:31 ↩︎
