Old or Young?

The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair (or no hair) the splendor of the old

(Proverbs 20:29 – with a slight editorial addition!)

I can remember the conversation vividly.  I’d only been a pastor for a few months, a whopping 26 years old.  During a special church season, I joined some local pastors in a ‘round robin’ of preaching, meaning that I wrote one sermon and took it to a different congregation every Wednesday night.  One night, as we sat eating cookies after the service, an elderly woman sat down to talk to me.  She looked me over very carefully, then declared, “Aren’t you too young to be a pastor?”  I thought that at age 26 I had ‘arrived.’  Apparently she wanted a pastor with a bit more experience under his belt.  I wanted to be seen as the ‘wise pastor.’  I was too young for that.

Now I sometimes live under the delusion that I am still a young pastor.  The Lutheran Church abounds in pastors of the Baby Boom generation, and they sometimes think of me as ‘just a kid.’  When I do my work at the synod office I’m often referred to as the ‘young whippersnapper.’   But I get together with pastors who are fresh from seminary and suddenly don’t feel quite as young.  I remember back to my junior high days.  My dad was my pastor, and he seemed pretty old.  He’d been a pastor for 14 years.  What a geezer!  Hold on!  Now…that’s me.  Yesterday was the 14^th anniversary of my ordination.   I have a teenager of my own now.  I’m no spring chicken anymore. 

In our culture, the young wish to be older…and the older wish to be younger.  Kids desperately try to act mature…and middle age people (and for me, the definition of middle age keeps rising!) try to smooth wrinkles to look 21 again.  We spend a lot of time wanting to be something that we are not.  

Is it possible to simply be content with how God made us?  We get so caught up in what we wish we were that we forget to appreciate the gift of what we are.