changing seasons

There's probably no ideal age to be.

I've always concluded that my 'optimum' years would be when I was 45-55. Optimum because my physical vitality and spiritual maturity would be in their best balance.

Before 45 I might be strong on ideals and energy, but (by definition) I'd be lacking in experience and the sort of wisdom which is tied in closely to that experience.

After 55 my physical condition would be deteriorating, for all that my spiritual maturity would more and more (one would hope) be coming into its own.

Realistically, with the best will in the world, I'd have to recognise that after the age of 55 my energy levels would be less, I'd tire more easily, I wouldn't be able to do quite as much as once I did.

Translated into the way I live my life, I long since realised that the emphases would inevitably have to change. I'd be less and less fit for the physically demanding and more and more able for the spiritually demanding.

I'd have to learn to pace myself better, and I'd have to learn to prioritise slightly differently.

Of course, when you're in that 45-55 age bracket, while you may be at your peak in terms of that balance between your physicaly energy and spiritual maturity, you're probably also having to cope with the greatest demands.

For those in work, in that ten year span of their lives, they're often holding down extremely responsible positions, working long hours, and facing enormous pressures.

For those who are married with family, their children are now often at an age when the demands on time, finance, energy and the heart, are invariably huge and exhausting.

Cash is constantly needed, a taxi service is regularly required, sometimes at unearthly hours of the morning or the night, difficult, direction-setting decisions are having to be made, and the strains inherent in that age when your offspring is neither entirely a child nor entirely yet an adult can stretch the heart to breaking point.

Very often, too, the demands of caring for ageing parents begin to kick in as well. Sometimes there's travel involved, sometimes some practical help: sometimes support and encouragement, sometimes advice and the need for the power of attorney.

If you haven't learned to 'juggle' by the time you've reached that age, you often have to learn to do so then. Quickly. It can often feel like a hundred and one different plates which you're trying your best to keep spinning.

Maybe it's just as well that a person is at their peak at that time of life. Most times, they need to be, to cope with what that time of life will often bring!

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven." So says the so-called 'Teacher'. And, it's this which at least in part I think he means.

There are these different seasons in our lives. We need to learn to recognise just where we're at, and what particular 'activity' this present 'season' demands.

I'm not 18 any more - despite that being the way I most times think of myself. Forty years on from that (not quite, but roughly), I'm into a very different 'season' in my life. The activities to which I give myself are bound, therefore, to be different.

The priorities in the ministry I seek to exercise are bound to be different too. I'm getting beyond that time when the balance has been at its best between the physical vitality and the spiritual maturity. I have to adjust. I have to be clear as to just what it is that this new, incoming 'season' best fits me for. And concentrate on that.

There isn't an 'ideal' age to be as such. The age and the stage we're at, the 'season' we are in, is simply 'ideal' for certain sorts of activity. Our truest wisdom lies in being able to see just what those activities are and then giving ourselves to them.