Thought for the Day, 1 June 2005

The Rev. Joel Edwards

Today, Help the Aged publish a new report, Dying in Older Age. It aims to lift the profile on the spiritual beliefs and stories of older people and help all of us avoid the nervousness with which we so often approach the subject of death.

Old age is often a synonym for "problem people" - a liability to the optimism of our Brave New World. By 2031, over 23% of the population will be pensioned senior citizens.

People fear the mortality of old age. But that's nothing new. W B Yeats, who felt old from the age of forty, went screaming into old age.

What shall I do with this absurdity,
O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature,
Decrepit age which has been tied to me as to a dog's tail? - he asked.

Not a great advert for senior citizenship then.

But I have to confess I have a vested interest. For whenever I visit or speak to my mother age 94 I'm getting a rather un-Yeats-like version of old age. She has all her faculties, and you need to be careful what you whisper if you sit close to her.

And she's not alone. Britain has a veritable 'Methuselan' roll call of people who have accomplished great things in their advancing years. Like Elizabeth Scofield who were heard about last week. At 84, and with an 80% mark, she became 'top girl' in her Reading and Writing Course. Or take Percy and Florence Arrow-Smith, married for 80 years today. They hold the world record for the longest marriage.

Old age still has a lot to say to us in life, as much as in death. Only weeks ago, John Paul II stopped the world, pulling princes, politicians and the public into his vulnerability and death.

We need models of how to live. But we also need to know how to finish well. All of us have a responsibility to help our elderly finish well. So beyond pension schemes and Winter Supplements, respect and honour will go a long way in helping to achieve it.

Finishing well must be numbered amongst the great virtues of faith.

Faith is not a Zimmer frame for living. It's a springboard which takes us beyond death. For Christians, it is faith in the living Christ, which best prepares us to finish well.

As Paul the Apostle put it,

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous Judge will give to me on that Day,"

Funny, that's what my mother says.