Getting older

Certain milestones in our lives rudely remind us that, despite what we like to think, we are, in fact, getting old. The "...0th" birthdays certainly do that: 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, etc. So do high-school reunion announcements.

This June will be my 20th - 20th!!- high school reunion. I graduated from high school in 1987 and - math doesn't lie - this being 2007, it has been 20 years since I was a high school senior. Two decades! A full 25 percent of the alloted 80-year life span for man (see Psalm 90:10)! Enough time for a child to be born, graduate from high school, and be almost finished with college!

A lot has changed since 1987. Back then, there was no internet, no cell phones, no laptops, no I-pods, no e-mail, etc. Gas was under a dollar per gallon. And "regular" meant "leaded", which was what I bought for my vehicle, a blue 1974 Ford F-150.

But much was the same. Drugs were a huge problem, like now. Kids were mostly interested in the opposite sex, which I suspect is the same today. Families then, like today, were often in shambles. Unless my memory really goes south someday, I don't think I'll be prone to sugar-coat my high-school days as the golden era of morality and virtue. It certainly wasn't.

In 20 years, God has been very good to me. Far better than anything I deserve. He's given me a beautiful wife, four healthy children, and has never let me go hungry or unsheltered even once. Since high school, by the grace of God, I went from something resembling an atheist to an agnostic to a believer in Jesus Christ. And, as shocking to myself at times as it was to my high-school friends with whom I have recently been in contact, I am a minister of the gospel.

At the same time, I have not been spared disappointment and difficulty. My sister Meredith's death in 1996 has been the saddest experience for me in the last 20 years.

Time goes by so quickly. I thought of this verse from the hymn, "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past":

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all its sons away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the op'ning day.

If time is a stream, then a lot of water passes by in 20 years. How can I be faithful with whatever precious days or months or years God may be pleased to give me from now?