Older by the day

Do you think the elderly have a corner on wisdom, that you have to grow old before you understand life?
Job 12: 7

Today might be more about sports, but I think a bit of life forces its way in there. I saw today that John Smoltz was joining TBS as a baseball commentator, though he refuses to say he had retired as a baseball pitcher. Oh, how that takes me back to a time when my kids were young and Mary and I were much younger.

We used to journey to see the Braves play baseball, either in Houston when they came through or to Atlanta. It was our summer trips, to see the Braves. John Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux were the Hall of Fame pitchers. You couldn't miss one a series, it seemed.

I can see my kids now, either at the little hotel outside the Astrodome or in a tent or cabin in the mountains outside of Atlanta.

Now these kids have kids of their own and I have no money to go to games and I've gotten creakedy (is that a word of any kind?) and time passed and the light grows dimmer and, and, and

I feel every day I get up closer to the end. It didn't used to be that way. I never worried about blood sugar counts or blood pressure counts or weight or any of those things. Now, I'm forced to worry about all of them, sometimes at once.

I don't feel I've led anyone in anything because all I've done is get older.

The Bible says of growing older, "Your job is to speak out on the things that make for solid doctrine. Guide older men into lives of temperance, dignity, and wisdom, into healthy faith, love, and endurance. Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don't want anyone looking down on God's Message because of their behavior. Also, guide the young men to live disciplined lives."

..."older men into live of temperance, dignity and wisdom." Is that what we do now? My wife, dear Mary, is headed to a nursing home right now to help comfort those persons who have no where else to go. One day there is a real possibility I could be in one of those, unless I let the above blood stuff go. Will anyone think me wise? Will anyone think me temperant?

I think not.

Today I saw a couple of sentences in the newspaper and I flashed to 1991 and 1992 and even that woeful 1993.

It's tought to get old.