(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
I must say, I am thrilled at the responses we have gotten to yesterday’s Catch about older people going downward in age and outward in relationships as opposed to the more common practice of older people to go upward in age and inward into isolation. I love what Peter said, “So let your body be old but your thoughts up to date.” This is surely possible.
To illustrate this, I don’t have to go any further than my own mother, who in her 80’s used to complain about those “old” people around her in their fifties and sixties!
I’ll never forget the moment I had with her after she had pretty much lost her memory — not knowing who I was or who she was, for that matter. Yet we sat on a park bench in an arboretum and talked about what we were seeing in the trees, and the colors, and the sky. We were experiencing the eternal “now” together. I wrote a song about that experience; the lyrics are below. She was still young then.
When she died at 89, a volume of women from 20 years old to middle age stood up to sing her praises in a memorial service that stretched for two hours as she had taught them through a Bible study and counseled them over the phone as long as she was coherent. You’re only as old as you think you are. My mother was never a day over 40.
And then there was an older couple — both of them acting like kids most of their lives — who heard me sing one of my early songs in 1967 in a church that had never seen a guitar in its 50-year history. They sought me out, and supported the beginning of my career as a pioneer in Jesus music. They were old, but their thoughts were up to date.
And there was John, who taught us the three-word phrase that should never be uttered in our lifetimes — “in my day …” Your day is over. The only day that really matters now is today.
And then Bob from Seattle introduced us to Lily Ebert, the 98-year-old young woman who has taken the Tik Tok audience of mostly GenZ kids by storm, telling her story as a Holocaust survivor #A-10572. See her story here. She is committed to telling her story as long as she can, and with the help of her great grandson, she is telling the world, and especially the younger generations who are largely ignorant of the holocaust. “In reaching out to the Tik Tok generation, Lily is keeping a lifetime promise alive.”
Do we not also have a lifetime promise that must be kept alive? If Lily can be a voice of the Holocaust to a Tik Tok generation, can we not be the voice of Christ to the Millennials and younger using their tools to reach them?
The Corner of Her Eye
On a park bench she sat looking
At the trees that lined the hill
Trying hard to find the words
When she knows she never will
So she watched the sad leaves shimmer
All innocent and shy
As she caught the golden sunset
In the corner of the sky
And I sat there with her wondering
Though she did not know my name
If she could see me smiling
And love me just the same
And I thought I saw a glimmer
Of all the years gone by
As I caught the golden sunset
In the corner of her eye
She didn’t have to say it
Didn’t even have to try
‘Cause she said it for a lifetime
From the corner of her eye
Now she dances by my window
But I cannot let her in
Or recreate the feeling
Of her touch upon my skin
Still I see a ray come shining
From across a broken sky
Like that gleam of reassurance
From the corner of her eye
She didn’t have to say it
Didn’t even have to try
‘Cause she said it for a lifetime
From the corner of her eye
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