 |
|
|
It occurred to me the other day that if the Lord grants me good health, my years of retirement could be more than my wage earning years. I had never thought about that. I spent many years in preparation for my career in education. Retirement was my next and last career and I had not prepared for it at all in comparison to the first career. Making sure I had the finances in place was about all the preparation I made. That and working on my golf game.
It was fifteen years ago that I retired and moved with my wife, Helen, to the retirement home we had built in Florida. We played a lot of golf and enjoyed taking friends out in our new boat. This is the good life that I see on the TV commercials, but something was missing.
We joined a church in our new beach community with our involvement there comparable to how we were involved in church while we were working. This level of involvement didn’t interfere with our golf and we were playing a lot of that. As long as my game was improving and my handicap was going down, it was fun.
After three years of playing, I noticed a change. I wasn’t enjoying golf like before. I would get very upset, even throwing clubs when I had a bad shot. I kept telling myself this was supposed to be fun, but it wasn’t. This career wasn’t working out like I had expected.
About this time, the Lord drew me to Psalm 139:16 “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, everyone of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (ESV) As I spent time in this verse, I came to understand that the Lord doesn’t write a book with blank pages. As long as I live, He has a plan for me. These years of retirement are my years of grace. He has given them to me with a plan for my life that is different than what He had written for the years of my professional career. Now I was excited to learn His will for my life during these grace years. The reason I wasn’t enjoying golf like I had was the Lord saying, “You’ve played enough, Frank. Now I’ve got something else planned for you.”
The “something else” has been exciting and a great blessing to my wife and me. We have been able to do things as retirees that were not possible when we had other career responsibilities. The Lord has led us into a mission work that has used our skills from that first career and given us the opportunity to take His Gospel to people in places we could not have dreamed we would ever be. These blessings have truly made our retirement years, “years of grace.”
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
|
|
|
