Stages of Life
Psalms 90:10Life’s stages show growth in wisdom and purpose despite trials and aging.
The twenties are the molding years when the young person forms those habits that will direct his career. Then he finishes his school work, stands before the altar, establishes a home, and looks the world in the face. The thirties are the years of discouragement. It is a hard and trying time. It is a time of battle without the dreams and poetry of youth. The forties are the years of vision, when a man finds himself, finishes his castles in the air, and knows the value of his dreams. In the fifties life comes to ripening. These should be the years of jubilee, and a man should do his best work then. At sixty, a man has committed enough mistakes to make him wise beyond his years. He should live better and do better work than in any other decade in his life. No man has a right to retire in the sixties; the world has a need for his wisdom. And in the seventies, some of the best work in the world has been done. It is the time when talent, experience, and insight combine to make a worthy and memorable life. Psalms 90:10 says, "The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is there strength, labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." Can the Finite Understand the Infinite? The story is told of a blind tortoise which lived in a well. Another tortoise, a native of the ocean, in its inland travels happened to tumble into this well. The blind one asked of his new comrade whence he came. "From the sea," was the response. Hearing of the sea, the tortoise swam round a little circle and asked, "Is the water of the ocean as large as this?" "Larger," replied he of the sea. The first tortoise then swam round two-thirds of the well and asked if the sea was as big as that. "Much larger than that," said the sea tortoise. "Well, then," asked the blind tortoise, "is the sea as large as this whole well?" "Larger," said the sea tortoise. "If that is so," said the other, "how big then is the sea?" The sea tortoise replied, "You only know about the water in your well. Your capability of understanding is small. As to the ocean, though you spent many years in it, you would never be able to explore the half of it, nor to reach the limit, and it is utterly impossible to compare it with this well of yours." The tortoise replied, "It is impossible there can be a larger body of water than this well; you are simply praising your native place in boastful words." This is only a Mongolian myth, but one that can teach man a great deal concerning his prejudiced view of his own knowledge. If man knows so little of the natural surroundings of his life, how much less must he know about the Infinite Creator of all things. The Infinite God The finite can neither see nor comprehend the Infinite. The Infinite has to reveal Himself. Henry Ward Beecher said: "When Columbus drew near to the eastern coast of this continent, he could see that there were mountains, but do you believe he knew what minerals were in them? Do you suppose he knew all the trees, all the shrubs, all the vines, all the herbs there? He knew something about the outlying islands of this great continent, but he did not understand the details that went to make it up. I can understand there is such a being as God, but when it is said that He is infinite, I am so finite that my comprehension ends right there. I cannot understand infiniteness. All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of Him but in broken and imperfect words. High above all He sits, sublimer than mountains, nobler than lords, truer than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet tread the lowest places of the earth, but His head is above all glory; everywhere He is supreme." The Depths of God At one time, that thoughtful man who became St. Augustine was greatly disturbed because he could not understand the essence of God. "I admit there is a God," he mused, "but how can I know of what He consists?" Christ had come down to earth with the claim that He was God. By His resurrection, which He Himself predicted, He proved that claim. He revealed that God is a Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But how could a mind as developed as that of Augustine accept this? One day as he was walking by the sea, he saw a small boy who, with the help of a shell, was emptying water from the ocean into a hole he had dug in the sand. "What are you doing, son?" asked Augustine. He was impressed by the naive answer, "I'm going to empty all the sea into this hole." Augustine smiled. An inner voice, however, was saying to him, "You are trying to do the same thing by thinking you can understand the depths of God with your limited mind." Our Limited Knowledge A woman who had recently returned from a trip to Europe was asked if she had seen the Rhine in Germany. "Oh, yes," she gushed, "and the view from the top was magnificent!" In the same manner, some Christians claim to know more than they actually do or even more than it is possible for a believer to know, especially about heaven and the life to come. They fail to recognize how imperfect our knowledge is in this life, even of revealed truth. Then they wonder at the rejection of Christianity by so many thoughtful people who try to arrive at the truth of God by their unaided intellect and hence fail miserably to discover a Christ who is so far beyond their mind's grasp.