a Saturday of listening

One of my favorite things to do is to sit for hours and just listen.

I have listened today to Christmas services from all around the country, reviewed all the links I've saved since last year of song ideas, video ideas and all kinds of projects that we may consider this year at Crossroads. Ready to create Easter - cover me and our team in prayer please!

Just listening and listening, open to what the Lord would have for me to 'take in'.  Very satisfying!

I have found the older I get the more important I consider listening to be.  Listening to my family, to what's going on around me, to my grandkids and especially to the older adults in my life. even though i consider it important I need to get better at it!

The death of my dad has created a new desperation to pay attention and to consider more closely what the older adults around me are feeling, dealing with and to consider how it feels as your vitality starts to slip away.

I look at my older friends and relatives and try to imagine them in the prime of life when their dreams had not yet been pressed into and before they gave up what 'could be'.

America does not value their older loved ones like some other countries do.  I wish we did.  Youth is idolized here - it's why millions are spent on face lifts and clothes that are not flattering to the older body - just trying everything possible to appear young.

As I reach out to those much older than me it's difficult to understand that they've also seemed to lose the ability to know what they do want.  When we offer to provide exciting experiences they decline, when we don't offer they complain about being lonely or bored.  It's confusing for both us and them.

I don't want to just take them on 'field trips', I want to convince them they are vitally important and have huge purpose in their community and in the eyes of the Lord.  We need their experience and wisdom and knowledge to be passed down to us.  Especially their spiritual maturity acquired by trial and error, by obedience and disobedience to the Lord.

I feel God calling me to do something about this senior loneliness - this acceptance of the elderly believing the lie of our society that their importance has ended.

This is my prayer - to figure out a new way to serve our elderly.