I Am Seventy And Still Carrying It

You are seventy and you are still doing all of it.

The lifting. The early start. The part that takes four hours and that everybody assumes takes about one. The clearing at the end, which now takes you longer than it used to and which you do slowly, after everybody has gone, because you would rather nobody watched.

Nobody has offered. That is the sentence you have never said out loud and it is the one that has a small ache in it.

I want to be careful, because there are two very different things this could be and the difference matters.

It could be that they have not thought about it. That is the likeliest one, and it is not cruelty. People do not audit an arrangement that has worked their whole lives. To most of them, this is simply how the day happens, in the same way that a road is simply where it is, and it has never once occurred to them that somebody has been putting it there every year.

Or it could be that one or two of them have thought about it, and have not known how to raise it, because raising it means saying something about your age, and nobody wants to be the one who tells a man he is seventy.

Either way the result is the same, and the result is a silence. And underneath the silence there is a fear you have not said either, which is that if you stop doing it, it might not happen at all, and then what was any of it for.

They shall still bring forth fruit

There is a line in the psalms about old age that is not consolation and is worth reading slowly.

They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing. (Psalm 92:14, King James Version)

Still bring forth fruit. Present, active, continuing. This is not a verse about being kindly remembered for what a man used to do. It is about what he is producing now, in the current season, at the age he actually is.

And it is set in a psalm about trees planted in the house of God, which is worth noticing, because a tree in its later years is not doing less work. It is doing different work, and it is holding a great deal more ground than it did at thirty.

You are still bringing forth fruit at seventy, and it is written into Psalm 92:14 as a present tense rather than as a memory. The written word puts the fruit in the current season, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a man tonight rather than a kind thing said at a funeral.

Now the part that matters for what I am going to ask you.

You were never told that the fruit is measured in lifting, and Scripture says flourishing rather than unassisted. Psalm 92:14 makes no claim at all about a man doing every part of a thing alone, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates what a man produces from how much of it he carries by himself.

Nobody has offered because nobody has been asked

Let me put something to you plainly, because plain is what a man in your position wants.

Have you ever asked?

Not hinted. Not mentioned that your back is not what it was. Not gone quiet in a way that a perceptive person might read. Asked, in words, one person, for one specific thing.

I suspect not, and I suspect the reason is a good one. Asking would be admitting something, and once it is admitted it cannot be unadmitted, and the whole arrangement might move faster than you want it to.

That is a real risk and I am not going to pretend it is not. But weigh it against what is happening now, which is a man of seventy doing four hours of work alone in the dark because nobody has been given the information.

You have been waiting to be offered rather than asking, and the written word never once treats a plain request as a diminishment of the man making it. Psalm 92:14 has a person flourishing in old age, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man in the moment where a hint becomes a sentence.

And here is the thing about hints that is worth saying out loud. A hint protects the person hinting. It leaves them able to say they never asked, so nothing has been admitted and nothing has been refused. That is its whole function, and it is why it has not worked in six years.

A direct question can be refused. That is what makes it powerful and that is why it frightens a man. But it can also be answered, and a hint cannot.

You have a question available that can actually be answered, and Scripture puts a man's later years in the language of fruit rather than of managing alone. Psalm 92:14 describes flourishing, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a man's voice while he asks for something for the first time in his adult life.

One person, one part

So here is the assignment, and notice how narrow it is.

Ask one person, in plain words, to take one specific part of it.

One person, chosen. One part, named. Not the whole thing, not a conversation about the future, not a handover, not a discussion about your age or anybody's plans.

Something like: I would like you to do the collecting this year, and I would like to know now rather than on the day.

You are able to ask for one specific thing without opening the whole subject, and it has never once required you to say anything about your age. Psalm 92:14 speaks of a man still bringing forth fruit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a plain request finally gets made in plain words.

I want to say why one part and not the whole. A whole handover is a different conversation and it may be one you want to have and it may not, and either way it is not tonight's. One part is a request. The whole thing is a succession, and a succession conversation started by accident, in a hallway, in December, goes badly.

And ask early. Not on the day. A request made on the day is a rescue, and everybody feels it. A request made in November is a plan, and people are glad to be in it.

You are making a request rather than beginning a succession, and it has never once been required that a man hand over everything the first time he hands over anything. The written word keeps a man fruitful in the present season, and the Spirit of God is the one who carries the part somebody else has finally been asked to take.