Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday March 31, 2009

Late one night last week a younger man tried to outrun the local police in a small town north of where we live. He was in an old S10 pick up and didn’t have a prayer, but eventually the race ended when his pick-up overturned and destroyed to the take out part of a Kentucky Fried Chicken palace. No one was killed.

As I read the account I thought about the founder of KFC, Col. Harlan Sanders. The story has it that he began the KFC enterprise when he drew his first Social Security check. He put some pots and pans into the trunk of his car and set out across America to sell his idea of pressure frying chicken, dipped in a Secret Recipe and the rest is history.

The same morning I was reading about the young man wrecking his pick-up while fleeing from the police, I came across the following from a church bulletin:

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

Les Brown made the above statement and I think it is a grand one.

Due to the fact that I am, erroneously, mind you, counted among the aged, I latched onto Mr. Brown's statement. My pastor son refers to me stating "Dad is an old lion, but make no mistake, he is a lion," thus I have no desire or need to dream of doing what a aborigine native, with no education or training in thinking etc, could do, and thus sit around wasting what is left of life, fishing.

One of the greatest wastes of natural resources on the Untied States is the atrophy of our senior citizenry, whiling away their life in some pretended leisure activity.

The happiest people I know are the ones who are reveling in what health they still have, always thinking about some new idea that challenges their mind and moves their heart. In some cases the exciting "new" thing is not new at all, but they have set a goal to improve some service or activity they truly love being involved in. About anything we do can be improved and thus the mental challenge is worth the effort. One of my friends, near 85, recently took a course from Microsoft to become a computer repair technician. Now there is a challenge. I know other folks who are 20 years younger than the above mentioned, and their negative statement burns me, "Oh, Brother Lilly, at my age you know you can't teach an old dog new tricks." The problem with that line of thinking is that older people are not dogs, (for the most part they are nowhere near as nice as an old faithful dog) and anyone who works with dogs knows they love to learn new things at any age. The Apostle Paul wrote in Philemon 1:9 "Yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ." Paul asked for commitment on the part Philemon to forgive and restore a repentant criminal and based the appeal on his own ripe age and present confinement in prison.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2009 Use with credit.

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