A Chip Off the Old Block

March 27, 2019

At 85, Caleb told his buddy Joshua, “I am eighty-five years old, and yet I am as strong today as on the day Moses sent me (45 years previously) just as my strength was then, so now is my strength...” (Joshua 14:10-11). After I retired, someone once told me that I was a Caleb; that I had new mountains to conquer. There’s just one problem: I’m not yet 85, but neither is my strength what it was at 45. Any mountains I conquer these days either better in reality be small hills, or I’m going to need a little extra time to get to the top.

Linda and I were cutting brush this afternoon. I’m glad to say she petered out before I did, but I wasn’t altogether unhappy to call it a day...after only an hour. How lame is that? There are so many things I’d like to accomplish...and so little time and energy available to me. I have dreams bigger than I could ever hope to fulfill, so one of the challenges at this time in my life is figuring out which of those dreams are realistic and which are only wishes and pipe dreams. 

It’s a good problem to have. Better that than looking around and saying, “Is this all there is?” I’ve known too many people whose dreams died somewhere along the way, leaving them mere shells of the vibrant souls they once were. Sometimes that’s unavoidable; tragedy strikes and life is suddenly turned upside down. Youthful dreams became nightmares. The real tragedies however, are played out in middle age when people settle for mediocre, for ‘good enough,’ or they just get tired of trying. I remember too well those years when it looked like my dream for the church would die in discord and discontent, those years when it took every bit of strength I had to just put one foot ahead of the other, to hold on when everything seemed to be breaking loose. I understand falling to the temptation to quit, but I know too that while success is not guaranteed, quitting is a sure and straight path to failure.

Lord willing, tomorrow I’ll get up. I’ll put my feet on the floor, stretch some aching muscles, and get going. Some of my plans will meet success, others failure. But I’ll chip away at it until I can chip no more...because I am a chip off the old Block, the Stone the builders rejected, Jesus Christ who instead of giving up, “for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the Father.” (Hebrews 12:2)