Barzillai’s answer is classic. “I don’t have long to live, so why should I go up to your city and be a burden on you? I’m 80 years old. I can’t distinguish any longer between good and bad. I can’t taste the food I eat. I’m so deaf I can’t even hear the singing of my people.” He thought a minute and then said, “However, here is Chimham. Let him go with you. Do for him whatever you think is fitting.” (19:31ff.)
Whether Chimham was his son, his grandson or the son of a friend or servant, we have no idea. But do not miss what happened there: The old man gave the youth to the king! He endowed the youngster in a life-changing way.
Many years later, when some people are talking about leaving Judea for Egypt, they mention staying at “Geruth Chimham, which is beside Bethlehem” (Jeremiah 41:17). The footnote says “geruth” means “the lodging place of Chimham.”
So, what do we have here? Going strictly by guesswork, since not a single additional word in Scripture speaks to this, a distinct possibility is that David took Chimham back to Judea and gave him land from his own inheritance somewhere in and around Bethlehem, the place of his birth and upbringing. Then, hundreds of years later—Jeremiah lived and worked in the sixth-century B.C., some three to four hundred years after David—his descendants are still there, still in place.
Barzillai changed forever the destiny of that young man and all who would come after him.
That is bearing fruit in old age. Endow a scholarship, lead a youngster to Christ, send a young preacher to seminary, give a car to a struggling but faithful young father, buy someone’s groceries and don’t let them know where it came from.
Youthful. They’re full of sap.
The life of a tree is in its sap, those nutritious fluids running up the veins of the trunk and throughout the limbs right out to the very ends of the leaves.
Some of the youngest people I know are the oldest ones in church. They are full of life, happy in the Lord, overflowing with love and laughter, fun to be around. They are still learning and growing and serving They are the most positive, upward-looking people in the congregation, the ones readiest to “tear down this old building and construct something for the future!” They appreciate their history, but love their Lord and God’s people far more. They are not so attached to the old hymns (which they love) that they cannot enjoy learning a new song.
Someone told me about their grandmother moving into the little specially-built apartment adjoining the house. Each morning as the family awakened, they could hear Grandma singing through the walls and knew she was all right. But one morning, no sound came from her part of the house. They began to worry after a bit, and one of the kids was about to go over and check on her, when all of a sudden, her lovely voice was heard singing, “All my exes live in Texas—that’s why I’m in Tennessee!” Grandma was just fine.
Young people love to sing and laugh, to learn and read and have fun, to get together with friends and to hug.
The saddest thing you’ll ever see is people who grow elderly long before their time. Let’s not let it happen to us.
Beautiful.
“They shall be very green.” The first time I noticed this phenomenon was with a lovely saint we all called Aunt Millie. I was her young pastor, some 40 years her junior, and we adored one another. One day, while looking through some old albums at the church, I spotted her among the crowds during the 1940s. The overwhelming thought that occurred to me was, “She’s a lot prettier now than she was then.” And that was a shock.
Until that moment, I subscribed to the cultural falsehood that people hit their prettiest in their teens or twenties, and thereafter, it’s all downhill. What an injustice we have done to ourselves with that lie.
Sometimes, speaking to high schoolers, I pose this little scenario to them: Here are two 15-year-old girls, one who is gorgeous on the outside and ugly inside (bad attitude, self-centered, mean-spirited) and the other who is plain on the outside but beautiful within (great attitude, loving spirit, sweet-natured). In time, if they keep on the way they are going now, their situations will completely reverse. The one who is beautiful outside and ugly inside will become unattractive outwardly, too. And the one who is plain on the outside and beautiful inwardly will become attractive outwardly.
Whatever is inside works its way out and will in time become evident to the world.
I’ve heard variations of this line: The face you have at age (whatever? 15?) is God’s gift to you; the face you have at (75?) is your gift to God.
