Eureka Christian Church

Reflecting Christ's Light from Our Doorsteps to the Ends of the Earth

Aging and Dying

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Intergenerational Faith Conversations

How do us old folks share our witness and wisdom with young folks who don’t seem to want to hear us?

Sharing your wisdom and experiences with younger generations can be a rewarding endeavor, even if they may initially seem disinterested. To effectively convey your witness and wisdom, start by building genuine relationships based on trust and respect. Listen actively to their thoughts and concerns before offering advice, choosing appropriate moments to share your insights. Be open-minded and acknowledge the differences in your experiences, demonstrating an understanding of the challenges they face. Patience is key; understand that young folks may not be ready to hear certain things immediately. Lead by example, showcasing the values and principles you want to impart through your actions. It can be helpful for young folks to encourage their independence by allowing them to make their own decisions and celebrate their achievements to create a positive environment for sharing wisdom. Respect is crucial for the success of intergenerational relationships, but it must go both ways. The goal is not to impose your views but to offer guidance and support, fostering an environment where they may become more receptive to the valuable insights you have to offer.

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If heaven is our destination, why do we have this time on earth?

With heaven being eternal, why must we endure this time on earth? With heaven being our destination…why?

One way of thinking about the question would be to phrase it this way: Why does God put people through the aches and pains of living on planet earth, if, in the end, God has already destined people for eternal life with God? Couldn’t God have created heaven on earth – or earth in heaven – in the first place? Did God really need to go through the trouble of creating humans like you and me (people with the capacity to inflict and endure suffering) in a world fraught with danger and risk when God could have just launched life 2.0 from the start?

Theologian John Hick answers a similar question in his response to the problem of evil. The problem of evil in Christian theology refers to the apparent contradiction between the goodness and omnipotence of God and the reality of evil and suffering in the world. If God exists and God is wholly good, then why does God permit evil in the world? Why does God fashion a world in the first place with the capacity for injury and suffering? Is this really the best of all possible worlds God could have made? Why didn’t God create the world as a heavenly paradise from the start? No stubbed toes. No getting old. No sickness or disease. No injustice or discrimination. Just bliss. If God can’t do this, then God isn’t all powerful. If God chose not to do this, then God isn’t wholly good or loving.

John Hick says that one possible answer to this question might be found in how we think about what it means to be a person. Part of what it might mean to be a person, is that we are “free and responsive beings,” capable of engaging our environment and the people with whom we share life. He argues that freedom and responsiveness are essential components of what it means to be a person. Both of these too (freedom and responsiveness) are essential to love. Love is not coerced; love is a gift freely expressed. According to his argument, a world without risk and responsibility, or one in which people were coerced by God to “freely” avoid evil, or one where pain and suffering did not exist (or never existed), would logically rule out any real possibility for humans to grow as persons, to cultivate virtues like trust, hope, and faithfulness, sacrifice, vulnerability, courage, wisdom, patience, and others.

We don’t know why – in the infinite expanse of God’s eternal life and love – God creates a world so fraught and fleeting. There’s a mystery at the crux of life’s impermanence and God’s eternal nature. Maybe it’s the only possible world suitable for human beings to grow, develop, learn, play, feel joy, suffer loss, wrestle with anxiety, and anticipate with hope the possibility of future joy.

In the Genesis stories, when God creates the world, God calls it good. God rests in its shade and walks among its hills. God strolls in the garden in the cool of the evening. God delights in its streams and valleys. Maybe ours is to do the same, to delight in the gift of life and time and space – and the infinite promise it holds – as long as we have breath in our lungs.

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What is heaven like?

What is heaven like? What and where is heaven? How do we know what comes after death? What is life after death like?

Maybe heaven isn’t so much of a “where” as a “when.” The Scriptures suggest that whatever heaven might be, it is most certainly when we are together with God. We don’t know what it might be like as a future reality beyond material life. Early Christian theologians referred to the mystery of heaven or eternal life as “glorification.”

Maybe the most we can do is ponder images. In the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah writes about the “beatific vision” where the lion and lamb are at peace with one another; war and conflict and human strife cease. In the Christian scriptures, Jesus preaches about the kingdom of God where the last are first, the downcast are uplifted, and where the soul is at peace with self, others, and God.

Earliest Christian views on the afterlife (especially in the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans) lay claim to the idea of the resurrection of the dead—that in the fullness of time, when the kingdom of God finally and fully dawns, those who have died will be raised to share forevermore in Christ’s fate, and death would be swallowed up.

Christian theologian St. Augustine once said in his spiritual autobiography The Confessions, that since God had made us for God’s self, “our soul is restless until it rests in God.” For Augustine, heaven simply meant something like “happiness in God,” which we experience here and now in our lives. Heaven now anticipates unending or eternal happiness with God in unbroken continuity.

Whatever the afterlife might be like (try as we might to imagine it through our physical senses or imagination), and however human conscious life is finally and fully transformed—where memory, intellect, and imagination are fulfilled or perfected (glorification) in the light of the Son—heaven, in a fundamental sense, means the hope of ongoing life in the presence of God.

C.S. Lewis tells the following story, in which he imagines the mystery and beauty of heaven, which is invisible and unimaginable to our senses, but glimpsable through the eyes of hope. In his analogy, he compares earthly beauty to heavenly beauty by comparing the experience of seeing a pencil drawing of a sunrise (lines on a page) and experiencing the colors and rays coming down from the horizon with your own eyes while basking in its warmth. He says:

“Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but the dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that that outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause.

For a minute or two they are at cross-purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. ‘But,’ she gasps, ‘you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?’ ‘What?’ says the boy. ‘No pencil marks there?’ And instantly, his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition—the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the colored three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve. The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.

So with us. ‘We know not what we shall be;’ but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape; not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.”

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How do I handle aging and the reality of death?

How do I handle the aging process and the reality of death?

“It is the things in ourselves that we refuse to face that have the greatest potential to tyrannize is. To deny the reality of fears is not to know ourselves, and then we risk becoming possessed by that which we refuse to face. … The courage to face unpleasant aspects of our inner self comes from feeling deeply loved. It also comes from the assurance that we are safe. Our gaze needs to go back and forth between divine love and our fears. We gain courage to face our fears as we soak in love. Meditation on aspects of Jesus’ life and teaching can help you further ground yourself in perfect love” (David Benner, Surrender to Love, pp. 49-50).

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Is there a way I can say goodbye to my loved ones after I die?

Is there a way I can say goodbye to my loved ones after I die – as I fear dying young?

I don’t presume to know exactly what happens when we die, but I have lost friends and family members I loved, and I can speak from those experiences. Even after my loved ones are gone, I sometimes have a strong sense of their presence. I think that what I feel in those moments is their love for me. Viktor Frankl also wrote of having a strong sense that his wife was present with him while he was imprisoned in a Nazi death camp even though he didn’t know whether his wife was still alive.[1]

In Paul’s treatise on love in 1 Corinthians 13, he spoke of spiritual gifts and of end times. He was writing in response to a Corinthian congregation who was arguing about which spiritual gifts were the greatest. Paul wrote, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:12-13, NRSV). Paul’s view was that even though faith and hope are important spiritual gifts, they are no longer needed after we die since we will be face to face with God. Love, however, endures, and that is what makes it the most desirable of the spiritual gifts.

I have offered you my Biblical and theological response, and now I would like to offer you a pastoral response. I suspect that your reason for wanting to tell your loved ones goodbye is to tell them you love them. If that is so, why is it necessary to wait? Tell them today and every chance you have how much they mean to you. You won’t regret it.

[1] Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006), 111.

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How can I help the dying or sick better?

How can I help the dying or sick better?

            If you can be with the person who is dying or sick, my suggestion is to learn how to listen empathically. That means learning how to listen deeply to what the suffering person is sharing with you simply for the purpose of fully understanding what they are experiencing. It is different from listening with the intent to think of something to say in response. Being heard and understood is often more validating and meaningful for someone who is suffering than just about anything we can say. And you need not be stoic in their presence; if you shed tears with them, it can be very empowering for them if they feel they have been heard.

            I find it helpful to reflect on times when I have suffered. I can’t remember very many things that people said to me in those moments, but I can remember many of the people who showed up. The fact that you are present for someone who is sick and dying probably means more than you know. Finally, if you cannot be present, don’t underestimate the power of a card or a short note to let someone know you are thinking of them.

Photo by Patty Brito on Unsplash

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What is my purpose when I am old?

What is my purpose when I am old?

This has been questioned as long as people have entered old age. In my ministry the elderly have consistently complained “I can’t do the things I once did.” I know firsthand what they meant. The other day I went to wash the car windshield. Easy? Hardly. I was exhausted and didn’t do a very good job. The first thing is to accept what getting old means. You have been blessed a lifetime and there is yet purpose.

Is your spouse still living? If so, tell them every day you love them. If not you can still talk to them and tell them how you have loved them and still do. Do you have grandchildren? Rejoice and tell them again and again how special they are. Do you have son or daughter who makes sure you are o.k.? Thank them, love them, and know how blessed you are. Your purpose is to multiply, to love your family, and thank God for them.

What was one purpose, no longer is. Your purpose is to live. And if you are single consider the special people who have been and still are so very important to you. To care about them is a purpose. Write to them, call them, and be a special friend.

Read and write, putting your thoughts and feelings on paper. You never know who will read it and be inspired. That is a huge purpose.

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What is our duty to Christ at our advanced ages?

What is our duty to Christ at our advanced ages?

Do we have a duty to Christ or is it a relationship in which we desire to belong to Christ. Each of us have our own ways of coming to Christ. Some things in keeping the relationship strong and viable are prayer, reading the Bible, caring for people around you, even people a long way away. Ex: The people of Ukraine. Don’t make it a duty. That makes it law and Jesus was not about law. It was more about the New Covenant in which goodness is something in the heart. See Jeremiah 31:31. God no longer commanded or demanded. God put goodness in our hearts. It has become a part of us. As Christians we are motivated by God’s love and grace. It is no longer a duty but a blessing in loving relationships with our God.

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How can I help my elderly parents without taking away their sense of independence?

How do I help my elderly parents without taking away their sense of independence?

What a hard question.  Well, you need an unconditional love for them and lots of patience.  They will probably struggle with everything it takes to be independent.  They will have frustrations and at time you will be the person to blame.  So when actions and decisions have to be make, be sure to include them in what course of action needs to be taken.  If it is something you need to do, include them as much as you can.  It is something they can do, decide together and let them proceed.  Remember it is a family affair like it always has been except now the heavy part of the process has shifted to you.  As much as possible try to help them understand that too.  Again lots of patience and unending love among all of you is essential.  Oh, yes, be sure to pray about it.