Probably an odd subject line for an email, I know. Don’t worry, this isn't about planning a wild spring break trip for the assisted living center.
Deadwood, South Dakota, 1999
I was wandering through a casino on my way to the Endless Crab buffet with some buddies. As college students we hunted for cheap meals wherever we could find them, and if my memory serves me correctly, the crab buffet was $20.
Again…all you can eat crab legs for $20.
Plus the mashed potatoes and biscuits, and I think there was also a dessert bar.
Twenty bucks was still a lot of money for a self-funded college student. My dad had refused to help pay for college because he guessed I would not be a very good student if he did. Like in most other things, he was correct.
Twenty bucks for that Friday night meal could last for the whole weekend if you ate enough crab and biscuits, because the key was to eat until you burst right up to closing at 9 P.M. If you slept in the next morning, you could wake up around lunchtime still full from the night before and not have to worry about breakfast. Have a small meat and cheese sandwich for lunch, Wheat Thins for dinner, and you were back in bed again. Sunday was when you could return home for meals at mom’s house. Boom. Three days of eating for around $25 plus the memory of sizzling crab legs. This perfect arrangement changed when I joined the Army, but it was a glorious first semester.
Sorry for the digression—just wanted to relive a precious moment. But something else happened on those Friday nights at the Silverado Resort that stuck with me.
To get to the restaurant downstairs you had to pass the slot machines. Regardless of the hour, every time I walked through that place, I saw elderly people at the slots. Vacant eyes. A bucket full of coins they were clinking one after another into the machine and tapping the button to refresh the spinning fruit wheel. Clink. Tap. Spin.
Every machine was full, and at least 90% of the occupants were over the age of 70.
Once, we went in the middle of the day between lunch and dinner. There they were again. Clink. Tap. Spin. Nearly everyone over 70.
It occurred to me that this was what they did all day.
From morning til night, they clinked, tapped, and spun the slot machines in the hopes that they could strike it rich and then REALLY devote time to ease and comfort.
I learned later about the tourism industry dedicated to getting retired people to spend their golden years in artificially lit gambling dens draining retirement accounts one quarter at a time. In the movies a casino is always in Vegas and it’s chock full of swarthy young high rollers with hot women on their arms planning heists. In reality, most casinos are not in Vegas, and very few swarthy young high rollers are around. Even if you go to Vegas, what do you see at the machines? Mostly the elderly. It's sobering.
There’s nothing wrong at all with "free to leave your wage-earning job" retirement. What we need to kill is the "do nothing but golf and complain about your lawn" retirement.
Being done with your wage-earning job after decades is terrific; now you are free to fight Kingdom wars on other fronts.
Too many are choosing the golf and lawn retirement only. Others are sucked in to the casino, or eight hours every day at the Cracker Barrel complaining about the news. Name your diversion and you will see the elderly flocking to it.
This will sound harsh, but here goes: there may be no more entitled group of people on the planet. "I worked hard," they say, "and I have earned my relaxation."
They're not entirely wrong. If you work hard and plan well, you should be free to ease up from the money rat race. And yes, you have the legal right to sit on your lawn and gripe about it.
Isn't there something better, though?
If you are over the age of 65, you might have decades yet to live. You're not as strong as you once were, and it's a young man's game out there. I get it. But couldn't you just swing the sword a little longer? Decide to not go quietly into the night?
I love the story of Caleb so much that I wrote a novel about him. It was inspired by my time as a conference speaker watching older men in the back of the auditorium quietly serving as ushers and greeters and cleaners. No fanfare. Pure service, pure devotion.
Day after day, week after week, plenty of these Christian men decided they were not going to spend 40 hours a week at the slot machines. They were going to spend their remaining time doing anything they could think of to take one more inch of blood-soaked dirt from the Enemy before they became a stiff.
In Joshua 14, Caleb took the time to remind everyone that he was the same destroyer of paganism he had always been, and they'd better not anger him by removing his opportunities for war. He’d spent 85 years following the wild and untamed God of the Hebrews and had no intention of planting fewer crops, conquering fewer cities, or claiming less of his inheritance.
As I write this, my family is preparing to say goodbye to one of the great warriors of our bloodline.
Flora Jane Walker (goes by "Mimi") is 93 and can no longer walk. Her mind is slower than it used to be. She can no longer read the great Puritan commentaries or study Spurgeon and Brother Lawrence daily like she once did. She’s only able to read her Bible here and there. My mother and aunt spend their days taking care of her as she once took care of them. They are modeling the sacrificial love she taught them over a lifetime.
To my knowledge, this frail old woman never commanded men in battle. She never held the stage of a captive audience of thousands year after year. She knew more about theology than many ThD’s but never published a book. She did not have a popular blog or podcast. When she departs this life, the world will not notice it at all.
And yet...
She did endure tremendous personal tragedy with grace and faith. She did ensure her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were told that Jesus Christ is everything. She did provide an example of quietly faithful Scripture-centered living that we’d be fools to ignore. Every week, when the hospice care nurses come for her checkup, she shares the Gospel with them and asks how she can be praying for them.
The world of her influence, never large in the eyes of men, has shrunk to a handful of caretakers. There is nothing obviously impactful about her remaining days. The God whom she has adored since the 1940's is sustaining her, because, much as we want her to pass on and enjoy her hero's welcome in heaven, there remains yet an Enemy to fight, and Yahweh has not summoned her.
So, she obeys His orders every day as best she can. All she has left to offer is a tired, weak breath of prayer.
Yet, that prayer has more ferocity against the Enemy than any braggadocious sermon from an arrogant preacher. The High King of heaven can look at the devil and his hordes and say, “Consider my servant, Flora Jane Walker, and be terrified of her.”
In my extended family are pastors, businessmen, singers, artists, nurses and more, all influenced by her. For me personally, she was the one who inspired the Lion of War series. As a young boy I listened enraptured as she told me about David and his Mighty Men, and to "never forget that David was a warrior, not just a psalmist."
Her legacy is secure, but it’s still incomplete…because she woke up this morning.
So did you.
Dear older brothers, if you could only see yourself how God sees you.
He knows your knees are bad. He knows your eyes are foggy. He saw you throw your back out when you bent over to search for something in the fridge.
He knows flights of stairs are daunting, cultural changes are depressing, and computer technology is terrifying.
Even so, he made you a killer of evil and you have not been relieved on the watch yet.
He made you a destroyer of fortresses.
He made you suffer and endure so you could earn your gray hair.
A generation burns with need for the counsel of the elders, for those willing to show them the ‘ancient paths.’
Too many seniors approach their final years with hedonism as their god, and we younger generations are suffering for it.
Stop quitting. Stop fading. Stop choosing weakness at the end when you have come so far.
Weaponize your gray hair.
It's not too late. You have regrets. We all do.
You also woke up this morning and have this choice in front of you:
1) Waste away your time with pleasure-seeking because you think you earned it,
or,
2) Find where the Enemy is working in your town and remind him you are not six feet under the ground yet.
Praise and Arrows-