Posted on 06/19/2021 10:15:28 PM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head” (Proverbs 20:29).
“The glory of young men is their strength,” you take the average young man and he will stand in front of a mirror and flex his muscles and look at himself. That is the glory of a young man. The older we get, the flabbier we get. We have to buy padded clothing, and we don’t wear horizontal stripes to look fatter than we already are. We have to be careful with our single strand of hair and comb it just right so that we look like we still got it.
Not the young man, he has a glory about him. A glory of youth.
“. . . and the beauty of old men is the gray head.” Yet there is a beauty of an old man, it is the glory of white hair, or as the Bible says, “the hoary head, if it be found in wisdom.” The older a man gets, the grey hair is a certain mark of distinction.
Now, these are the things that men glory in, but God doesn’t glory in any one of them. God glories in His Son and if a man is saved, that is what God glories in: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Paul said, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14).
It doesn’t matter whether you are strong or grey-headed, you can lose it all tomorrow, God is glorified in the life of a believer, and that is a blessing.
There is a warning in Jeremiah 9: “Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD” (Jeremiah 9:23-24).
If we are proud of anything, let us be proud of the fact that we are known of God, and know God.
When Mrs. Eliza Kirk of London, England, attained the ripe old age of 101, she celebrated the anniversary by removing all mirrors from her home. The reason given for her strange action was, “I like to think of myself as I was, not as I am.”
The believer can do something vastly superior to removing mirrors. Without attempting to ignore or forget his present appearance, he can place the telescope of prophecy to his eye of faith and see himself as he is going to be.
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
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