Christian Family, Free Online Correspondence Course Lesson — 8

Sunshine at the Eventide 

Old age increasingly makes us less “relevant” to the fast-paced, fast-changing younger eneration. Most people are too busy to give us time.  Off they go to work, to school, to appointments. uccess brings more  work, more stress, less leisure. We long for our grown children to sit  down and talk to us, but they are driven by more demanding  commitments and opportunities. The younger generation cannot relate  to our situation as we wish. We shouldn’t fault them. Now our time is  too precious to be spent on finding fault. 

As our time winds up in the eventide of our life, our moments are  precious. This is the time of our life to bless others. We can bless if we  are blessed ourselves. We can bless if we have a blessing to give. What  good can we do? What words can we speak to bless? What fruits of our  life will speak of us after we are gone? 

As we wake up in the morning, thousands have departed this life the  previous night. What shall we do with this day, this present moment, we  are permitted to live? The present moment is ours by God’s grace, and it  is precious. Should we not offer it up to the Giver in thankful joy? “O  Lord I offer this precious moment to You,” let us pray. The present  moment belongs to us by God’s grace, and we belong to God. In offering  the present moment to God we are offering ourselves to Him. As we  make a truly conscious offering of our present moment to God, we  experience pure joy, and we are drawn closer to God. We worship. Our  time is our life. As we make a truly conscious offering of our time to  God, we sense God’s leading in the daily affairs of life. 

Daniel lived in a land far from his own, but in his old age God showed  him visions of things to come. Daniel was a man of prayer. John who  wrote the last book of the Bible was in exile in his old age and God  opened the heavens and unveiled the future to him. John was a man of
prayer. Old age did not hinder Daniel and John from fulfilling their  ministry of prayer. Anna the prophetess was a widow of about eighty-four; she “served God with fastings and prayers night and day (Luke  2:37). It was granted to her to see the infant Christ in the temple. On  seeing the infant, she knew it was Christ, and “gave thanks likewise unto  the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in  Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). It is God’s will that we devote ourselves to a  life of prayer as we set our hearts to finish the work the Lord has assigned to us on earth. 

Would you like to invest your time for eternity? Ask the Lord Jesus to  give you a longing to pray. The Lord will give the longing, the Lord will  give grace, and you will see a change coming over your affections. The  Spirit of God will give you a love for the presence of God and for  prayer. As we begin to experience this, we also experience the joy of  being in God’s will and being led by the Spirit. 

When we apply our hearts to prayer we will receive an ever-increasing  measure of the Holy Spirit. We do not know how we ought to pray, but  the Spirit knows (Rom. 8:26). As we long to pray the Holy Spirit helps  us to pray as we ought. This indeed is so blessed. As Job prayed for his  friends, the Lord restored his fortunes; and more than that, “the Lord  blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning…” (Job 42:12).  Job’s friends had faulted him when he was suffering, but he prayed for  them. When we pray as Job did, the Lord gives us a double portion of  the blessing. Let us pray for others and not condemn them. We are  blessed, and called to bless. 

Please reflect on the following from Fenelon’s (AD 1651-1715)  Spiritual Letters:  “Our whole life belongs to God, as well as our whole heart;  neither is too much to give Him. He has bestowed them upon us  only that we may love and serve Him; let us keep back nothing  from Him. We cannot always be doing a great work, but we can  always be doing something that belongs to our condition. To be  silent, to suffer, to pray when we cannot act, is acceptable to God.  A disappointment, a contradiction, a harsh word, an annoyance, a  wrong received and endured as in His presence, is worth more  than a long prayer; and we do not lose time if we bear its loss
with gentleness and patience, provided the loss was inevitable,  and was not caused by our own fault. 

Thus spend your days, redeeming the time; give up vain  amusements, useless correspondences, those weak outpourings of  the heart that are only modifications of self-love, and  conversations that dissipate the mind and lead to no good. Thus  you will find time to serve God; and there is none well employed  that is not devoted to Him.” (Fenelon’s Spiritual Letters,  Christian Books Publishing House, pg. 236)  For such there shall be sunshine at the eventide.