When Ladies at the Lattice Lose Their Luster
By Foy Valentine, Founding Editor
Our mortal lot, according to the Psalmist (90:10), is to hope for a life span of some "three score years and ten." Then "by reason of strength" some may even attain "four score" years.
Strength or no strength, I attained that exalted status on July 3, 2003. It wasn`t easy. It`s still not.
You can tell you are 80:
When all your shoes are slow shoes;
When you`ve got more money than you have time;
When you never pass up an empty chair;
When everybody mumbles, mumbles, mumbles;
When you never remember a name but you always forget a face;
When you firmly agree with Thomas Carlyle`s observation that you can never trust the heart of a man for whom old clothes are not venerable;
When you are nearly always ready to welcome "a little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep" (See Proverbs 5:10 and 24:33). Ah. Yes. Tolstoy had it right to observe that a nap in the afternoon is silver, but that a nap in the morning is pure gold; and
When your daughter sends you a birthday card that says, "Dad, I hope you never lose your hair. It`s such a nice one."
Solomon was an astoundingly insightful old man to write about the geriatric facts of life; and no one has rendered Ecclesiastes 12 as sensitively and as beautifully as James Moffatt:
Remember your Creator in the flower of your age, ere evil days come on, and years approach when you shall say, "I have no joy in them;" ere the sun grows dark and the light goes from moon and stars, and the clouds gather after rain; when the guards tremble in the house of Life, when its upholders bow, when the maids that grind are few and fail, and ladies at the lattice lose their luster, when the doors of the street are shut, and the sound of the mill runs low, when the twitter of birds is faint, and dull the daughters of song, when old age fears a height and even a walk has its terrors, when his hair is almond white, and he drags his limbs along, as the spirit flags and fades.
Brother Solomon was singing my song.
Eighty is a sobering milestone. In addition to the grace of God, I have my rather long-lived forebears to thank for this modest achievement. I take precious little credit. A few things come to mind, however, as being possible contributors to the attainment of this mark. Please consider a few of them.
1. The hand of God. Deliverance from a lifetime of close calls which unbelievers might callously attribute to blind chance, or dumb luck, or immutable fate, I firmly believe to have been at the hand of the Lord. Near drownings, a copperhead snake-bite, sundry airplane crises such as engine failures over the open ocean and once over the vast expanse of the Amazon jungle, teenage idiocies, fearful food poisonings in primitive third-world preaching places, and two absolutely terrifying 2 a.m. batterings on my isolated, working-class hotel door when I was in St. Petersburg in the USSR teaching Christian social ethics to about forty of the finest and most earnest Christians I have ever encountered. My host, the seminary president, assumed it was KGB terrorists or hostile Russian Orthodox Church hit men or both. As we often sing, "Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come; `Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace shall lead me home."
2. Family. Fine parents and a good and faithful big brother, a wonderful wife for 56 years, three splendid daughters, and a gaggle of well-above-average grandchildren all have contributed significantly to my long life.
3. Friends. Not only would my life have been infinitely poorer without an extraordinarily wide circle of really good friends, but I am reasonably sure it would have been shorter. I know it would have been of a much poorer quality.
4. God`s calling. An unwavering, unambiguous, unshakeable sense of God`s special calling has kept my frail raft afloat. My feet have been often, if not nearly always, wet; but the raft has not yet sunk.
5. Sleep. Sleep has always come easily to me. Indeed, I have a perverse inability to stay awake when I am tired and stretched out. When normal people are tossing and turning, wide-eyed, stressed out, and weighed down with the cares of this world, I am zonked out in the mindless bliss of deep sleep. I hardly ever require more than about three minutes to drift off into deep sleep.
6. A cabin in the mountains. When I was about thirty years old, I found a piece of land at Red River, New Mexico, at 9500 feet altitude, some twenty feet from a trout stream, in a beautiful valley of blue spruce and quaking aspen. I borrowed every dollar of the money to buy it and then built a little cabin on it in 1958. For 45 years now this marvelous mountain retreat has been a life-renewing, battery-charging, soul-rejuvenating blessing.
7. Hard work. My hard work routine is a life pattern that I learned from my parents. One of my father`s often-repeated admonitions was, "Hard work never killed anybody." While I had many occasions to think him mistaken about that hard saying, I am now confident that the strong medicine of hard work has significantly contributed to the quality and well as to the length of my life.
8. Leanness. For their good, God "sent leanness" to his sometimes rebellious, complaining, idolatrous people (Psalms 106:15). For most, affluence is a heavy burden which tends to bring stresses, anxieties, and unnumbered worries. The Great Depression with its terrible "Leanness" was probably the most defining experience of my life, not just affecting but actually shaping the first two or three decades of my life. Then when I finished my formal education at age 25, not much changed. Leanness kept hounding my hapless heels. After 7 years as the Director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission (I was making $10,700 annually), when the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission called me, the trustees strained mightily and matched that salary with not one penny of increase. Not to worry. The "leanness" has kept falling out for my good. I am compelled to salute it.
9. Banana pudding. There must be powerful karma in really good banana pudding. In my unscientific opinion, there are life-buoying elements literally teeming in a large bowl of hot banana pudding liberally sprinkled with nutmeg. A couple of scoops of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream may be happily permitted but are not required. After all, it is hard to gild the lily.
10. Laughter. God gave me an abnormally exuberant and ready sense of humor. Things often strike me as funny. I guess I laugh more than most folks. A new joke mandates a long distance call to my brother and to selected friends. Repartee comes readily, and sometimes detrimentally, to my mind. Through all these years this good medicine has lifted my spirits, cleared my head, regulated my heartbeat, and eased my pains. I think it has prolonged my life.
Well, there you are.
Eighty. I did it. And I`m glad. A little surprised. But glad. Even though along the way as Moffatt`s translation puts it the ladies at the lattice lost their luster. Or at least a right smart of it!
