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A Prayer for Senescence Lord, I come to You to ask for Your blessing upon those who are engaged in the inexorable process of deterioration. It is not for guidance that I make this request, for the collapse of the body and mind with age comes naturally. Nor do I beseech You to grant the humility required to accept that one's capabilities are steadily and irreversibly diminishing, for the awareness of our own expanding frailty is unavoidable and engenders in all but the most pig-headed of us, a resignation to the inevitable manifestations of time. No more do I ask for the miraculous, for an unnatural reversal or even slowing of the process, for I know that such a request is not only foolish but unwelcome by those on whose behalf I direct this prayer to You. Finally, Lord, I do not pray to You to grant strength to those in whom the care of the elderly is placed, for the source from which they draw their strength remains entirely a mystery to me. I dare not tamper with it. Yet still, Lord, I pray. I pray because on Sunday mornings, Your church is disproportionately filled with an aging population, raised in a different era, according to customs in which You played a more significant role, who have trusted all their long lives in You. For them, I ply their own tools because soon they will be lost. |
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A Prayer for Senescence David Keffer Knoxville, TN October 9, 2014 |