How Old Do You Want to Be?
“Somebody’s having a birthday soon,” my husband said, hoping, I suppose, for me to feel the depth of turning fifty-nine. “That means I have forty-four more years,” I replied. That’s the number I have saved on my calendar.” I do, in fact, have the number 4—4 listed on my calendar. The math is really simple 59 + 44 = 103. That’s the age I have always said I wish to live until, but why? Why would anyone want to live past their century mark? Well, the answer is really simple. This is my fifth decade of life, and soon I will enter the last year of this decade, before stepping into my sixth decade. If the LORD tarries to come for His church & if my health does not fail me, then I will enjoy my sixties, step into my seventies, entering the age the Bible speaks we are given to live. Then after that decade, I will grow to enter the decade where my mother currently lives (the 80s). After a short 120 months (10 full years), I may have the pleasure to grow older in my ninth decade, the place where my grandma Hall and her mother resided. So, after that decade comes the three-digit point (100), and how cool would that be?!!!
So, why 103 and not 100? Why not?
How Old Do You Want to Be?—when Jesus comes to bring you home?
- Maybe you have read this discussion about age and my questions.
- Maybe you now wonder why you are still here (reading).
Here’s the truth, I may not even live until next week, to reach my birthday, and if the LORD has determined that to be my fate, then that’s okay too. I can state this with authority because since I was a teenager (15), my citizenship has resided in heaven. I know because the Bible tells us so.
“For our citizenship is in heaven,
(The Letter of Paul to the Philippians 3: 20-21 NASB)
from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;
who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory,
by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”
- From the moment we believe in the work Jesus did on the cross when He gave His life for us.
- From the moment we believe that Jesus arose from the grave to new life.
- From the moment we give our hearts to Jesus and begin to follow Him.
- From that moment, we are no longer citizens of earth but citizens of heaven. HALLELUJAH!
Therefore, whether we live until 59 or 67 or 74 or 85 or 96 or 103, none of this earthly life and the counting of birthdays will matter—WHEN JESUS COMES TO BRING HIS SAVED ONES HOME TO HEAVEN!
We can know this is the Gospel Truth because Jesus Himself declared it so when He was speaking with Martha one day in her home in Bethany.
“Jesus said to her,
(The Gospel According to John 11: 25-26 NASB)
“I am the resurrection and the life;
he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,
and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”
[Then Jesus asked Martha and us an all-important question.]
“Do you believe this?”