Prayer Concerning Aging

                Read II Timothy 4:6-8.

⁶ As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. ⁷ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸ From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

 

                For me as for everyone, Lord, the years are adding up.  I want to handle their passage with grace: I do not want to grow old without having grown up.

                Grant me, I pray, the honesty and courage to acknowledge and accept the changes the years will inevitably bring: 

¨   Changes in physical appearance;

¨   Changes in physical strength, agility and energy;

¨   Changes from my children often needing me to them seldom needing me;

¨   Changes from feeling so many doors are open to knowing so many doors have closed. 

If the years are bound to shape me, I also have the power to shape them.  What I have watched others do, I, too, can do.  What the aging process can give I can receive, if the will and desire are in me. 

¨   I pray that my picture of myself will become a truer picture, a picture less and less tinted by illusion and self-deception.

¨   I pray that the cooling of the fires of ambition will set me free to do my work without the distractions of envy and anxiety.

¨   I pray that my sense of proportion, of that about which is most worth caring, the tests of time will clarify and purify.

¨   I pray that my awareness of the doors that time is closing will sharpen my appreciation of the doors that are still wide open -- the doors that can lead to a deepening faith and to a stronger, better, wiser me.

Amen.