AGE IS SOMETIMES VIEWED as a practical way of classifying human beings and assigning them to various groups: babies, children, adolescents, adults, and seniors. Although these divisions may show the advantages and possibilities of each age group, they also emphasize differences, separations, and limitations.
I have already passed through several of these categories, but I have never felt age to be a barrier. On the contrary, I have always enjoyed the company of all the generations. For example, I cherish very valuable memories of the times I spent with my great-aunt during my adolescence. At that time I was studying history at the university, and for me, our conversations were more than social occasions, because she was an eyewitness to the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. Also, she had known people who lived at the time of France's Second Empire (1852–1870), and her recollections were accurate and interesting.
While I appreciated her being able to retrace more than four generations of my family, I was also very impressed by her example. I loved all the Christian qualities she expressed. In fact, I saw in her not a great number of years, but goodness, wisdom, generosity, courage. Attending a Christian Science Sunday School, where I learned how to study the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, helped me to understand that the true nature of men and women is not defined by age, but by what God gives them. Spiritual strength, joy, and intelligence are gifts from God that constitute man and woman, and, like God, they are permanent and eternal. In the following verses, the Bible explains that God's gifts do not decline, but are constantly renewed: "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning." Lam. 3:22, 23.
