The Afternoon of Life
The Afternoon of Life
by Christopher Ash
However you feel about having turned fifty and however many years have passed since, I write to wish you a good afternoon of your life. Let me explain what I mean. Very roughly, by“ the afternoon of life” I mean your fifties and sixties— two decades when you might sense that you are entering or have entered a new season. I want to encourage you who have put your hand to the plough in the service of Jesus, not to look back but to walk on faithfully through this window of your life. As you follow the Lord Jesus, may you be one who sets your face to finish the course the Father has set before you. May God bless you in the afternoon of your life and make you a faithful follower of Jesus.
Not Old, Not Young …
In most of the world today and for the larger part of human history, your fifties and sixties would be the evening of life. You would not be surprised to die during those decades. But largely, in prosperous, Western societies with nourishing diets, good health care, and long life expectancy, the evening is often postponed until our seventies, or perhaps even our eighties or nineties.
What we are left with is this fascinatingly ambiguous time in between younger middle age and old age. You are not old, but you are not young. For simplicity, I call this our fifties and sixties, although, of course, you may perhaps feel that it began earlier or, more likely, that it is lasting longer( as people like me in our early seventies rather like to hope).
It is worth saying that— as I leave behind this stage of life and the evening beckons— I am not here describing all the things I have done. Far from it. More often than not, I have written the book I wish someone had given me before my fiftieth birthday. Perhaps it might have saved me from some of my many failures and mistakes had I been humble enough to read it. I hope it will do you good.
One of the challenges of writing a pastoral book like this is knowing how much to dig deep into practical questions. Because our lives and circumstances are so wildly different, I have tended to err on the side of speaking to the heart rather than seeking to offer practical counsel.
At a stage of life in which positives and negatives, joys and challenges, jostle with one another in what can feel like a confusing jumble, I write to help you think things out in the light of God’ s truth. I write to wish you God’ s blessing, God’ s keeping, God’ s face shining on you, God being gracious to you, God giving you peace in this window of your life. If God is your Father through Jesus, then you may say with David that every one of your days were written in God’ s book before one of them dawned( Psalm 139:16). I want to wish you rich blessings in each one of those days. I hope to think with you about what that means and what it is to be a glad disciple of Jesus in these particular days. You are not old, not young, and most certainly not done in your service of, and growth in, the Lord. I hope you will be a man or woman who knows through these years the joy, the peace, the purpose and the contentment that Jesus offers to His followers. That you will hear on the last day those wonderful words:“ Well done, good and faithful servant”( Matthew 25:21).
This is an adapted extract from Not Old, Not Young, Not Done by Christopher Ash, used with the permission of The Good Book Company.
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