He Da Man

No, not John Wayne. I'm referring to my brother. Have you seen the Two Weeks in Hell series on the Discovery Channel? It's a peek into the Green Beret Training Camp. My older brother ... been there, done that.

(I use him and my other two older brothers as my excuse for why I've never been naturally athletic. They stole it all before I was ever even a twinkle in my parents' eyes.)

At the time my bro went through that training, he was in his mid-twenties and in the best shape, he says, he's ever been in. And yet, twenty years later, he believes that if his younger self met his older self in a fight, the elder would win. (Why they would fight I have no idea. My focus is on age, here.) "Something to be said for experience and mental toughness."

As I inch a little farther into my forties, I find myself gazing longingly at those still noodling around in the decade just previous to mine. Deep down, I know what I'm doing ... Placing the knowledge and growth of me-now- on that 30-something self and wishing I could have been just a little bit wiser.

But it doesn't work that way, does it? We learn as we add the years to our lives, and there's a process and timing for all our seasons in the Lord.

Moses was eighty years old when God called him to deliver the Israelites. Zacharias and Elizabeth were well past the baby-having stage, for their culture, when they had John. David was an old man when he wrote some of his most poignant and powerful Psalms.

I love this from C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters: "He [God--from the demon Wormwood's persepective, the Enemy] would have them continually concerned either with eternity ... or with the Present--either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure. ... [T]he Present is all lit up with eternal rays."

"The Present is all lit up with eternal rays."

The Present. Eternity. That's a good place to rest in as I walk toward the future.