Then and Now

All that you are ever to be you may already have been.

Bob Pierce

I am adding a new category this week called self-reflection. I do a good bit of it these days and decided to share some of my thoughts.

Then

Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, came to speak at our church in the 1950s when I was in my early teens. I don’t remember anything he said except the quote above. As a young teen my head was full of the future and what I wanted to do and be someday. I was imaging a long life ahead of me and plenty of time to do all the things I dreamed of.

I was aware of the question “What is your life?” in the New Testament book of James and the answer that follows, “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” But I don’t think I applied it to myself at thirteen or fourteen until I heard the statement from Bob Pierce that night. It jolted me into considering the present and I resolved to make now count.

Over the years, every time someone I knew seemed to die too young – a high school classmate who died over the summer after our freshman year, my Aunt Gert’s nephew, Warren, who died in a auto crash at eighteen, my niece, Gwen, whose life ended of cancer before she was forty – I thought of this statement. It caused me to take a fresh look at what I was doing with life at that moment.

Joe Ann was sixty-five when we went to Slovakia and seventy-seven when we returned to the U.S. By the way she lived her life, she didn’t say at that time or anytime, “I’m content with what I’ve been and done. It is now time to relax, retire, and take it easy.” Of course, what she was able to do changed with age, health, energy, and other limitations, but it didn’t diminish who she was; until the end she was living her life aware of the importance of now.

Now

My dear friend, Frances Fuller, who finished a book called Helping Yourself Grow Old at age ninety is continuing to make positive contributions to the lives of others in a number of ways. Her writing today is still about aging and can be found in her blog.

There are others around me both my age and older who are also good role models for me by enriching the lives of their familes, friends, and others as they live each day in menaingful ways with gratitude for the gift of now.

When I was working on my doctorate in sociology, my related field of study was gerontology. Then, I studied aging and now I am one of the aged. The quote from Bob Pearce that spoke to me deeply when I was a young teen is still relevant to my life today. Whatever happens to me in the years ahead, I want to continue being and doing with purpose.