Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you. (Isaiah 46:4, NIV)
I played two pick-up holes with a young man the other day. Not any young man. An accomplished local player.
On the first hole, he sent a drive straight across the corner bunker, leaving himself an 80-yard wedge to a guarded flag. He knocked it to about six feet.
The next hole is a par-3, playing to a diabolical hole location that day on a table top green. He sent his tee shot on a direct line to four feet.
I would say, “Oh, to be young again,” but I’m not sure I was ever that confident and skilled, even in my youth. If I was, the memory has faded—which of course is one of those things that happen when we get older.
God has been there for all the days that have passed, and he will be there for all those to come. What an assurance!Not that I’m old. Not in our day and age. A friend told me that same day that he had recently read that if you make it to 70, you have a great chance of living all the way to 85. He’s excited, because he’s less than a year from that crossover mark. And I’m more than a dozen years behind him. At least chronologically. We’ve both been broken open—he for heart surgery and I for cancer resection—so who knows how close our race to the end is? Who, that is, but God?
I want to know the Lord so much more than I do, with depth and closeness. But what I do know is that I can trust him. And, extensively, I do. He has counted my days, from the first to the last. He has been there for all the days that have passed, and he will be there for all those to come. What an assurance!
Through Isaiah, the LORD made many pronouncements about himself. I love reading these, because they come straight from God’s own mouth. They are not reflections of pastor-teachers or projections of theologians. They are God’s sure utterances. In them, he tells us who he is and what he will do.
Among the promises of God are the words of today’s passage, Isaiah 46:4. Here, he says, he will be with us every last day, no matter how long we last. In the beginning, he made us; in the end, he will carry us. We can count on his good care, no matter how “old” we are.
So as it is, you can have my fuller head of hair, my strength to hike mountains in the Sierra, even my faster golf swing. I have the Lord. Today. I will not be sad about bygones I do not need.
—
Jeff Hopper
November 11, 2019
Copyright 2019 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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