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Senior years: high noon, not sundown

From the April 1991 issue of The Christian Science Journal


How often during the day we're apt to think of age, our own or someone else's. Usually, such thoughts are negative, even fearful. We're educated to believe that loss accompanies senior years—failing faculties, fading good looks, waning health. But these impositions upon our well-being can be lifted off through spiritual education.

The Bible teaches that age can be viewed from a wholly different, constructive perspective. We read in Job, "Thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning." Job 11:17. In Hebrew the word translated "age" means duration of life or lifetime. Since noon is the highest point, the time of greatest light, Job's metaphor implies that throughout our entire lives we can be at the high noon of ageless being unclouded by mental or physical decline.

But to realize Job's promise requires spiritual growth. We need to grow out of a false, material concept of ourselves as aging mortals conditioned by matter into the understanding of man's genuine selfhood as the immortal, spiritual idea of God. This growth takes place gradually as we learn to reject aggressive suggestions of aging and to accept as valid only the spiritual facts of being taught in the Bible and corroborated in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy.

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