".....if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."

To My Dear Children,

This morning as I read in II Samuel, a character in chapter 19 named Barzillai piqued my interest. David had been betrayed by his son Absalom who was attempting to take the kingdom from his father. Ahihophel, David’s trusted counselor, had joined Absalom in the betrayal. (Incidentally, Ahithophel was the grandfather of Bathsheba). Spurgeon mentions in The Treasury of David that Ahithophel’s betrayal may have been the basis for Psalm 55. While David was in the wilderness fleeing from his son, he was met by Barzillai, a man of means, who brought ample supplies for David and those who fled with him. After Absalom was killed and the rebellion was over Barzillai meets David at the Jordan River and David invites him to go with him back to Jerusalem. Barzillai refuses and gives as his reason something every “aged person” should consider. He said, “I am this day fourscore years old…” He said that he could no longer discern between good and evil (your mother and I are having trouble keeping up with all the changes in the church today so we have accepted, as a badge of honor, being called “old fogies”), his taste buds had lost their flavor, and his hearing was such that he could no longer appreciate good music. He would only be a burden should he accompany David back to Jerusalem. He also said that he wanted to go back to his own city and be buried next to his parents. I read all of that with great interest. Often circumstances take us places in God’s Word where we haven’t been before.

I shared this with your mother at the breakfast table and decided to pass it on to you. Too often over my years as a pastor I have met with the “aged” who would not accept the fact that they could no longer do what they did in their younger years and were becoming a problem not only to themselves but to their loved ones. Advertising has them convinced that they can still “climb that mountain,” and so they spend their savings trying to re-capture their youth.

Thank the Lord this need not be a problem in the spiritual realm. We may “grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ” until He calls us home. As I write this I am experiencing all that Barzillai found in his old age. There are so many things I can no longer do, but I am not looking back, only forward to meeting the one I have served for 57 years. I have even bought a plot for your mother and me next to that of your grandparents in the “Blough Mennonite Church Cemetery” which is located about 500 feet from the home where I grew up. I confess however, that I pray every day that the Lord will spare me from Alzheimer’s disease, which my mother went through for several years. Poor Alois Alzheimer whose claim to fame is to have a disease like that named after him! I close with some of the words from Longfellow’s poem:

God’s-Acre
Into its furrow shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith that we shall rise again
At the great harvest,…

Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of the second birth;…

With Thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow!

Till Then,
Love, DAD