Golden Years

Coming out into a busy college parking lot this afternoon I couldn’t find my car.  I really looked carefully up and down the rows.  No car.  Could someone have taken it?  Holding the key in my hand I decided to press the alarm button to see if I could hear it or see its flashing lights. The beeping horn almost rattled my teeth.  I was standing right beside my car – right beside it!  Early this morning my wife and I had swapped cars.  Even though I had driven the beeping car to the parking lot when I came out I proceeded to search for the wrong car.  Ouch.  I’m seriously beginning to doubt the hype about “golden years.”

I think the real golden years are when the house is full of little kids, when you are barely paying the bills yet hear “Daddy’s home” and hear the thunder of little feet coming to mob you.  My dog does that now but it’s not quite the same.  It’s a dog.  I wish the four legs were divided between two little boys. The problem with most of us is we don’t recognize the real golden years until the wall fills with graduation pictures and then they are over.

I wonder what I will forget tomorrow.  In my human development class I talk about long and short term memory.  As we age we hang on to the things we learned decades ago.  Memory verses I learned as a child still fill my mind as inspiration for these devotionals.  One of the best things we can do for our children is to have them memorize a Bible text each week.   Decades later they will thank us for it.

Written by Roger Bothwell on February 8, 2011

Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574

Rogerbothwell.org