No retirement from being an apprentice

Ah…the retirement years, Freedom 55 (or 65), the Golden Age!

We look forward to them, plan for them our entire lives. We make sure we will have enough finances to get us through. We get out our bucket list of travel plans. We make sure we have purged all the stuff we have collected through the years, so our kids won’t have to. Retirement is the prize at the end of a busy, striving life. Yet the reality is that we are inevitably aging, even though we are living longer and are more active than generations in the past. Do we also plan for our retirement from active ministry? Is there a sense that now we should rest? What does that look like?

I have often in my life looked to older people and marvelled at their amazing wisdom, their “sold out” obedience to Christ. Their active involvement in church, family and community. How does that happen?
In Hebrews 12:1 we are told to “…run with perseverance the race marked out for us fixing our eyes on Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of faith…” As apprentices of Jesus Christ, we know there is no retirement from obedience to Jesus. Obedience is not a 6-week internet course that we can download. It is a slow transforming process that comes from a life-long commitment, no matter at what age you begin.

As we go through our retirement years, our “second childhood” so to speak, let us remember to again become like children and use the slower lifestyle and lower responsibilities to fix our eyes on Jesus, to sit at his feet and learn anew. For there is never a time or an age when we have learned all we need to from Jesus.

-Judy Fryer
55PLUS Coordinator