I had the honor this past Monday to attend the funeral of Mrs. Pauline Newland at the Oak Grove Baptist Church, Mt. Carmel, TN. I was there because this was the funeral of the mother of Bro. Randall Newland, a member of our church at CrossRoads.
Through the years I have had the privilege of expanding my knowledge of the great family of God through funerals of persons that I had not gotten to know in their life, but came to know them in their death.
Mrs. Newland left behind a husband of over 60 years, four sons and had served in her church for thirty years as the organist. She had a stroke over 15 years ago resulting in major changes in her life, her family and church family.
As I sat at the funeral, I thought of the saying that often I've heard and may be even said, "I wish I had the wisdom of years when I had the energy of youth." That saying means that when we have energy (young), we lack wisdom. And when we have wisdom (older), we lack the energy to do much about it.
As I pondered that, I thought how ungodly and unBiblical that statement is. In light of eternity, we are not wasting our growth in wisdom.
Abraham had the most faith the older he got and was able to have the son of promise, lay that son of promise on the altar of sacrifice and believe God would be able to raise his dead, burnt body back to life (Hebrews 11:19). I will take Abraham in his old age long before I will take him in his earlier days.
Paul said, "We do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day."
As believers, we are getting ready for eternity. Thus, we must become weaker in the body and stronger in the spirit. Weaker in the body because if we never got sick, broken, and old; then we might not have a yearning for heaven - our eternal home. We need to be stronger in the spirit because we will not lose what we have learned about God when we die. The closer we get physically to God's home should cause us to get spiritually fuller the closer we get.
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