Angels and Aging

This morning's sermon was on angels. Without much elaboration on this point, our visiting minister mentioned the many aged people in our congregation--people who have served the Lord a long time. He assured us that the angels are waiting to conduct these people safely to heaven. Thinking about this was the clincher for a fairly open-ended conversation going on inside my head ever since I saw a thread on Facebook that mentioned aging.

Dwight Gingrich said this (in response to a question): I think a lot of us don't really acknowledge how broken our fallen world is until our old age, when we can't avoid it. I loved this insight on aging--acknowledging as it does the challenges of aging, and at the same time, at least inside my own head, wringing from this awareness a truth that focuses on deliverance through the hope of eternity in heaven--away from our broken world.

Throughout most of life we push back at brokenness in a variety of ways--doctors and drugs for illness, exercise for weakness, education for ignorance, relationships for loneliness, and tools for minimizing labor. But finally, in old age, none of these things work any more for alleviating the problems that develop. The use of one drug necessitates the use of another to relieve the side effects of the first, balance is poor and physical exercise becomes hazardous, learning something new is a chore, friends have died, and technology tools are useless because they'll always be a mystery.

Dementia causes people to utter words they forbade their children to use, and they display stubbornness they would earlier have spanked their children for. They seem unable to access memories and unable to form new ones. No longer perceptive in social situations, they talk when others are quiet, and clear phlegm from their throat frequently and noisily. No cure is possible because brokenness in our fallen world will always be present.

Enter the angels. "Ministering spirits" rings with promise. Watching over the helpless elderly is just as surely a priority for angels as is watching over helpless children.

Thinking about the transition from earth to heaven was a comfort to me today. I think I have unconsciously always visualized an empty spot between earth and heaven--a difficult place to cross over. Today I visualized that place populated by angels. Ever vigilant, they stand poised to deliver the aged to their final, heavenly home--perhaps swooping them up, rather than leading them on, and depositing them in heaven almost before they are aware of having left earth--a final service for people with worn-out bodies and minds who have no power to proceed toward heaven intentionally.

In the time before the crossover, those ministering spirits are present also, and ready to serve their charges--the aged and their caregivers. I thank God for this.