The Class I Was Too Old to Sign Up For

The form was three pages and she got to the end of it.

Name, address, previous study, which was a box she looked at for a while and then filled in honestly. A short paragraph about why. She wrote four versions of the paragraph and the fourth one was good, and she read it back and thought, that is true and I would say that out loud.

And then, because there was a link, she went to the page that says meet our students.

Twelve photographs. Eleven of them are under thirty. The twelfth is a man who might be forty five, and he is described as bringing valuable experience, which is a sentence she read three times.

She is fifty nine. She closed the tab.

Not with any drama. She did not sit there and grieve. She closed it the way you close a tab, and went and put a load of washing on, and it was four days ago and she has thought about it every day since and has not opened it again.

Here is what she would tell you if you sat her down, and it is not what people assume. She is not embarrassed about her age. She likes her age. She is not intimidated by twenty two year olds, she has raised two of them.

It is the arithmetic. Two years for the course. Then, realistically, another two before anybody would let her do anything with it. She is fifty nine. She would be sixty three, and she has watched what happened to her mother between sixty three and seventy, and she cannot make the numbers produce anything that looks like a return on it.

That is the whole of the objection and it is a good one and it is entirely reasonable and she has not been able to shake the four days.

There is a psalm written by somebody old, and everybody quotes the first bit and skips what he actually asks for.

He asked to be kept until he had told them

I have to be careful here, and considerably more careful than usual, because this is where somebody normally makes a promise. Sign up and God will do something with it. It is never too late. You will be amazed what happens. I am not going to say any of that. Nobody talking to you about God has been authorized to promise a late achievement, and a promise that does not land will cost a woman of fifty nine more than the closed tab did.

Psalm 71 is written by somebody old. He says it plainly: Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth (Psalm 71:9). He is not pretending. His strength is failing and he says so.

And then, later in the same psalm, he asks for something, and it is worth reading exactly what it is. Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come (Psalm 71:18).

He does not ask for more years for their own sake. He does not ask for a return on his investment. He asks to be kept going until he has told the next lot.

You are being kept by somebody who has not finished with the telling. That is not me sweetening the psalm; Psalm 71:18 has an old man asking to be sustained specifically so that he can show God's strength to a generation coming after, and the Holy Spirit who preserved that prayer left the failing strength in the same psalm.

And notice what he does not do. He does not promise himself an outcome. He asks. The whole psalm is a request from a man who is not certain and who keeps talking anyway.

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.Psalm 71:18

The arithmetic is not wrong

Let me take her objection seriously, because it is a serious one and pretending otherwise would insult her.

Two years plus two years is four years, and she would be sixty three, and her mother went downhill between sixty three and seventy, and none of that is irrational. It is a person doing sensible planning with the only data she has.

Here is the flaw, and it is not in the arithmetic. It is in the unit. She has been calculating a return, and a return needs an output, and everything on this site turns on the fact that fruit is not output.

She is asking what the course will produce. Nobody, in that sum, has asked what would grow on a woman who sat in a room for two years with people who are twenty two.

You have been costing a thing in a currency that was never the point. Psalm 92:14 says they shall still bring forth fruit in old age, and bring forth is not the same verb as achieve; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) grows fruit rather than issuing returns.

This is yours right now, with a closed tab and a load of washing on: a life that is still bearing whether or not the sum works. Psalm 92:14 also says they shall be fat and flourishing, and the flourishing there is a description rather than a plan; the Spirit who inspired that psalm did not attach a payback period to it.

What she is actually protecting

Now the thing underneath the four days, because it is not the numbers.

If she does not sign up, the question stays theoretical. If she signs up and it goes nowhere, then she will have found out, at sixty one, that she was in fact too late, and she will have to live with that in a way she does not currently have to.

The closed tab is not a decision. It is an insurance policy.

You were never in danger of being cast off in the time of old age. Psalm 71:9 is a prayer and Isaiah 46:4 is the answer to it, where God says even to your old age I am he, and even to gray hairs will I carry you; the Holy Spirit who inspired both left the request and the reply in the same book.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. While the washing goes round, tell Him one true thing about the four days with nothing asked for. Not a request for a sign about the course. One true thing. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody grades that.