On Life at Home

to your old age I am he; and
even to hoar hairs will I carry
you: I have made, and I will bear;
even I will carry, and will deliver
you.” God has not forgotten
our elderly and neither should
we. He carries them and bears
their problems, and as long as
they are still with us we must do
the same by them. God made
them and because of them we
are here, therefore, we owe due
love, respect and caregiving to
the ones who were here before
us. It is a good thing to care for
and respect our elders. Leviticus
19:22 says: “Thou shalt rise
up before the hoary head, and
honour the face of the old man,
and fear thy God: I am the Lord.”
God looks upon the way we treat
our elderly and we must understand
the importance of being as
good to them as we are everyone
else in our lives. At times,
we must even be better by them
depending on the situation.
How Should We Deal With The
Elderly and Widowed in Our
Lives and In Our Churches?
One of the most noticeable problems
that our elderly face is the
ability to get from one destination
to another. Because of the
changes of their physical bodies
due to age, they begin to take
longer sitting down or standing
up, they walk slower often
because of pain, generally they
have to have the assistance of
a walker or cane and they need
more assistance opening and
closing doors. They need our
help, not our opinions about why
they are changing/going down.
We live in a generation that
was not taught that the respectful
way to treat a lady is to get
the door for her, therefore, most
people do not consider the need
to get the door for older people
either, and many times the aged
person is left to battle getting in
or out of cars and buildings. This
should not be. We must begin
to educate our generation about
the importance of looking out for
the elderly. Help them when we
see them struggle to carry bags,
open doors, load their vehicles,
get their groceries from the cart
to the counter, etc. There are
so many things that we can do
to make life easier for our aging
community.
We must also teach our generation
that because a person’s
mind is not as sharp as it used
to be, does not mean that the
person is all washed up. It is time
that the younger generation realize
that if God allows them to live
long enough, they too will see
a day when their mental capacity
is not what it once was. They
too will become irritated when
people try to make them feel as if
they are done for. We must stop
placing our elderly in a group
that the rest of the world shuns.
If we have to categorize them, it
should be as the greatest leader
category or the category of the
most wise, etc. We must give our
seniors the love and respect that
they are due. This stands true for
all seniors that we come in contact
with daily. Whether it is our
family members, church friends
or people we pass by in Wal-
Mart. We need to let them all
know how much that we respect
them and appreciate all of the
ways that they have given to our
society through the years.
Dealing kindly with the widowed
is probably the most important of
all. Losing a companion is hard
enough, but when you have to
deal with the loss of your youth as
well, it can be extremely devastating
for some. Seniors who have
been married to their spouses
for many years know firsthand
what God meant when he said
that they would become as one
flesh. A couple who have spent
many years together most likely
function in every way, together.
Life for the elderly widow/widower
will not be the same as it
is for a younger person. Where
most young people will begin to
start a new life, our seniors have
already lived their lives and the
loss of their spouse can and has
led to their soon to come deaths.
We need to understand that they
have truly lost the biggest part of
themselves in most cases and
without our help, they perish.
James 1:27 says: “Pure religion
and undefiled before God and
the Father is this, To visit the
fatherless and widows in their
affliction,and to keep himself
unspotted from the world.” Again
I say that God is pleased with
and expects us to take care of
widows. Just as children experience
loss in life when they are
fatherless, so do spouses experience
loss when widowed. We
are to show the love of God by
being there to offer our helping
hands to them in whatever
ways that are possibly within our
means.
Using Wisdom When Making
Hard Decisions Regarding
Your Parents
Dealing with people that we have
no relation to always seems
easier than dealing with the same
issues in the lives of our families.
For some reason it’s never
a problem to reach out to those
who we see once in a while or
even those we have never seen