There are many losses that accompany aging:
- Beloved relatives and friends become ill or disabled and die.
- Our own bodies seem more and more our adversaries and less and less ourselves.
- Treasured family in Christ turn from their once vibrant faith and walk away from God.
- Fruitful contribution and vocational flourishing become faint memories as “our seat at the table” is appropriately yielded to those younger than ourselves.
There is a loss less discussed but which seems perhaps the most painful of all, at least for the follower of Jesus. We have lost the ability to redo, repair, restore in those places where we have failed to do rightly, failed to act faithfully, failed to serve purely. The time to act is long gone. This loss leads to regret, and the wake left by regret can swamp the soul with utter despair.
What can possibly help with this ruinous regret? One of the few authors I have found who directly faces this soul-deep ache is a spiritual forefather, Archibald Alexander.
Alexander was born in 1772 near Lexington, Virginia, into a Presbyterian family. But he did not come to dependence upon Jesus for his salvation until he was in his late teens. He had begun a course of study under the Rev. William Graham and faced the fact that although he had studied the Westminster Confession and Catechism, he had never been reborn by the Spirit. Upon his personal encounter with Jesus, he almost immediately began to employ the amazing intellectual and spiritual gifts he had been given. He began a course of study that led to his becoming a pastor, and then president of Hampden-Sydney College, and finally a Princeton Theological Seminary professor.
When Alexander reached his 70s, he began to write about aging gracefully in his letters to beloved friends, students, and relatives. He brought deep comfort to those experiencing what Shakespeare described in his play, As You Like It, “the second childishness.”
The vulnerabilities and dependencies of childhood resurface in old age. The difference, of course, is the distressing impropriety sensed at these vulnerabilities now that we are older. They rest awkwardly upon the shoulders of the aging. The cuteness of a toddler’s dependencies are now the despondencies of the aged. This is, to the older servant of Jesus, a strange country; a foreign land; an uncharted isle of frightening proportion.
Alexander sought to equip those preparing to face or already facing this “second childishness.” He sought also to equip the younger to rightly assist the older as they ventured into this disquieting frontier.
For Alexander, the most vicious despondency of old age was regret. He writes: “The bitterest of all reflections to the aged is that of sins committed, duties omitted, time wasted, and opportunities for doing good neglected. Reflections of this kind at certain times become insufferably painful.” Now that kind of loss can be paralyzing!
Alexander makes it clear that there is only one cure. Since life does not permit a “redo,” we would be utterly hopeless were it not for the Gospel!
For every horrid regret over what we have left undone, or deep anguish over what we know we have wrongly done, we have but one recourse: “For this we must have the recourse to a fountain, even the blood of Christ, which cleanses from all unrighteousness.”
With Gospel-faith, Alexander argues that the painful conviction over innumerable past failures can actually help those who are older to be much more humble and trusting in Christ than our younger brothers and sisters.
“The recollection of such sins serves to convince them (the older) that they ought to place themselves among the ‘chief-sinners’ and the ‘least saints’” while simultaneously making most clear “the faithfulness and loving-kindness of God in the strongest possible light.”
Here is this veteran pastor’s counsel. “My aged friends, permit me to counsel you to not give way to despondency and unprofitable repining at the course of past events. Trust in the Lord and encourage your hearts to hope in his mercy and faithfulness…dismiss corroding cares and anxieties.”
Alexander commands the aging to believe their beliefs and doubt their doubts. If ever the Gospel is needed in all its rich and robust potency, it is when the decades of sins of omission and commission clamor for our heart’s attention. When one’s entire life rises in the court of the conscience, “We have an Advocate, Jesus Christ the Righteous!” (I John 2:1)
When we are younger, the weight of a life already inadequately spent seems far less foreboding. Not so to the older. Alexander counsels the veteran believer to “run to the Rock that is higher” and praise him. Embrace Gospel humility and enjoy Gospel safety.
We then help those who are younger in faith to see how the worst of life’s pains can in fact be addressed by the best of Christ’s provision.