This week has been filled with re-runs of past posts. I often use this process to regroup – to heed my own advice – to find a topic of interest. This post was written at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. At that time, we had no idea of the vastness of that disease or the repercussions and loss that would result. Since then, people have become more cautious about washing hands, wearing masks when necessary and general sanitary ways of avoiding the spread of any disease. How has COVID changed your life? Many of my friends lost their sense of smell or taste. Many succumbed to isolation and became social hermits. Entertaining friends is finally coming back into being. Gathering of any kind has lessened. The biggest change for many has been the loss of a loved one. When faced with any alteration to our lives, we are called upon to respond. Our emotions play an important role in this, but our relationships often take a hit and need to heal. As we look back on this horrible time, let’s never forget that God was always there in the midst of it – watching over those most affected by it – healing some and taking some home to heaven – using man’s intellect and science to find a vaccine – listening to our prayers. Though time has changed a lot of things in the past three years, our God remains the same. With that in mind, here’s my post from April 2020.

The thousand-mile checkups and replacement parts are getting more and more intense as time marches on. We come to a point in life when we resemble the six-million-dollar man from the 1970s TV series.  Change is inevitable, but why does it happen so fast? As we grow older, everything is in a state of flux. We do have an indoor bathroom, but now we need an extra-large toilet seat. Our bodies are in a constant race to the end of our lives. We lose inches from our height and add girth to our middles. I like to tell people I used to be six feet tall, but gravity has caused everything to fall down to my hips. Our arms resemble tree trunks with fingers.

When our homes start to show wear, we give them a facelift with paint, or we might add something new to dress them up. When we get old, everything we try to do to improve our health, our looks, our outlook, our daily living, seems to be just a cover up for what’s really going on within. We take our cars in for oil changes. We buy new appliances when the old ones fall apart. We upgrade our electronics when new ones become available. There is a lot to be said about planned obsolescence, but when it comes to our end game on this planet, we need to know that there is a final upgrade that will never change.

When we start looking at the dark side of things, there’s nowhere to go but downhill.  The aging process includes ponderance on our demise.  We tend to feel sorry for ourselves.  We sometimes feel left out, lonely and useless.  When we start slipping down that slippery slope it’s time to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and move on.  There’s nothing funny about being in a state of depression for your final years.  We need to put things in perspective again and put on a happy face – even when we don’t necessarily feel that way.

Over my lifetime I’ve seen massive changes in the way things are done.  I’ve witnessed a change in things designed to make our lives easier. The way we come up with solutions, how we live, the family unit, the networks of communication and how we worship have changed, but the Word of God remains the same.  It has survived for all these centuries, because it is the truth directly from God. When our final breath is taken, we can be sure that God will carry us to paradise.