Rather than focusing on growing old and ways to hide aging, Karla Hackney writes of shifting the focus to living spiritually as a means of experiencing, now, the eternal life spoken of in the Bible. She includes an example of someone who’s shift of focus had impressive results!
Does living spiritually include seeing beyond the signs of aging?
You will appreciate thinking about how living spiritually can affect quality of life when shifting the focus off of aging.
Below read the start of Karla’s article then click the link to read it all in SouthernOregon.com.
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of articles on aging gracefully. In Every Man a King, Orison Swett Marden muses, ‘Better than the art of growing old gracefully is the secret of not growing old at all.” Although Marden’s 1906 “secret” focused on how mind and thought can influence one’s longevity, today’s headlines portray the “secret” as a pill which purports to extend the normal human age span an additional forty years. ( Can people really die of old age?) Not to be outdone, demographer Aubrey deGrey published in the Annals of New York Academy of Science, that “[those] born toward the end of the twenty-first century may well have a life expectancy exceeding 5,000 years.”
Science may claim the ability to prolong earthly life indefinitely, but Jesus offered eternal life as something in the present. He said, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”(John 17:3 KJV) His point was not so much to seek a record-breaking mortal body sometime in the future but to find one’s present and forever unity with the life that is God, Spirit.
Christian theologian Mary Baker Eddy, who surpassed the normal life expectancies of her 19th Century generation by 35 years, noted that Jesus uses the present tense when talking about eternal life. She wrote, “‘This is life eternal,’ says Jesus, is, not shall be; and then he defines everlasting life as a present knowledge of his Father and of himself, — the knowledge of Love, Truth, and Life.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 410)
This approach to longevity is notably different from taking a pill. It involves turning away from human means toward a spiritual understanding of Life to support one. How is this possible? Is it really practical?