Faithfully yours - Facing facts of life

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Published on Monday, July 16, 2018

By Neil Strohschein

Neepawa Banner & Press

I turn another year older this coming week. I’m not bragging. Nor am I complaining. I am just reporting facts as they are. This happens every year at this time; so I’m quite used to it.

What amazes me is the number of birthdays I have had. I honestly didn’t think I’d make it past the age of 40. But I have. Nor did I expect that, in the course of my life and career, I would officiate at the funerals of both of my parents and parents-in-law. But I’ve done that, too.

Now, as each birthday comes, I am again confronted with one obvious fact. I have far more years in my past than I have in my future; and I need to decide how to best spend the years I have left; however many (or few) they may be.

One of my persistent challenges is the age gap between my head and the rest of me. I have a 35-year-old head. In other words, my head, for reasons I will never be able to explain, is convinced that my body can do the same things and absorb the same amount of stress that it did when it was 35. The problem is that the body is over 30 years older than the brain and can’t do what the brain thinks it can. So every so often, when the head asks it to do something, the body just shuts down and sends a two-word message to the brain—“Dream on!!”

But I am far from being an old cripple. I can still think clearly, I can talk (sometimes way more than I should), my preaching skills are still good and I can write; probably better now than I could when I first began writing these weekly columns. I can read and I am still able to absorb what I read, process the information and let it influence my thoughts, words and deeds.

My focus, as I shared in previous columns, has changed. I no longer worry about issues or problems over which I have no control. I vote in elections, but that is the limit of my political involvement. As for organized religion, I offer as much help and encouragement as I can to local churches of all faith traditions; and I will gladly lead worship and pray with any who invite me to do so. Beyond that I have neither the interest in nor the desire to become involved in the political activities that seem to demand so much time from paid, accountable ministers.

My goal in life is simple—to live one day at a time and to make the most of the opportunities I am afforded each day. I will leave it up to God to decide where I should live, for whom I should work and what I should do. I trust him to take me into the lives of those who need me the most; and will, by God’s grace and with his help serve them to the best of my ability.

God will never ask any of us to do more than he has given us the resources to accomplish. But he will hold us accountable for failing to use the time, talent and treasure we have to serve others in his name. So as we face the future, especially as we grow older, we can be assured of this—God will always have work for us to do; and he won’t let any of us die until we have completed it.