Child-like in Old Age

 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)

I may not be in my old age, but I have my share of gray hair. I guess we may never completely outgrow the desire to be someone's child. Although that can create a childish person, it may also be able to make someone more child-like.

As I get older I have had more obvious examples in which I have needed someone to sustain me, even someone to carry me and rescue me. Sometimes a sickness has taken all sense of pride from me with pain or incapacity. Sometimes I am faced with horrible problems in my family that I cannot face or fix. Sometimes I am hardly able to get out of bed in the morning from sheer weariness or despair. I find I can enter such moments in childish ways or in child-like ways. I can throw tantrums and kick and scream or I can grieve and cry out for help and comfort. They can be similar in appearance, but my heart is radically different in the midst of them.

Growth into child-like humility involves letting go of outcomes without giving up. It involves having a place to stand apart from my desires without disowning them. It involves learning how to love reality more than the illusions I weave. The God of peace can be found if we know how to seek him.