Retirement in God's Service

 Retirement is always associated with old age. It usually means physical decline and weakness, loneliness, and a retreat to inactivity. Some retired people just sit and think, and sit and think. . . and sometimes just sit. That’s getting old in the worst way – – ceasing to live before one dies.

In Philippine setting, the retirement for the military and police is fifty-five or thirty years service whichever comes first. This is rather too young an age to retire. But considering the nature of work of soldiers and policemen, studies show that this is just the right age for them to retire. Many military men who use their common sense and are smart especially those who graduated from the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), apply to become executives of large corporations and earn and enjoy more their life after their retirement.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur was already a retired General of the US Army serving as the head of West Point Military Academy, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled him to active duty during World War II. Thereafter, having proved his genius as a military commander both in World War II and in the Korean War in the 50’s, he served in various capacities in the U.S. government, the last of which was his assignment in Japan as the Occupation Military Commander of that country to whom the emperor of Japan reports. He rebuilt Japan economically. The industrial economic success and stability of Japan today is an eloquent proof of the genius of Gen. MacArthur even in his old age. He was compulsorily retired by President Harry S. Truman at age 74 due to conflict of strategy in handling the Communist expansionism in the world. He served well the U.S. government for fifty-two years!

History records that many people made some of their greatest contributions to society after the age of sixty five. The Earl of Halsburg, for example, was 90 when he began preparing a 20-volume revision of English law; Goethe wrote Faust at 82. Galileo made his greatest discovery when he was 73. Sir Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of England at the age of 77.

On the religious world, at 69, the respected missionary Hudson Taylor, was still vigorously working on the mission field, opening up new territories in Indochina. In Old Testament times, when Caleb was 85, he took the stronghold of the giants (Josh. 14:10-15). Moses, the acclaimed great leader of Bible times was eighty years old when he was commissioned by God to liberate the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt, then the World Power of all nations of the known world. He served for forty years until the Lord took him at age 120 and buried him with God’s own hands (Deut. 34:6).

God never intends for us to retire from spiritual activity at an early age. Instead the Bible tells us:

^“12 The righteous (believer) will flourish like a palm tree,  they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
¹³ planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.
¹⁴ They will still bear fruit (souls or spiritual fruit) in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,”

(Ps. 92:12-14 NIV)

Even as Jesus kept the “best wine” for the last at the wedding in Cana (John 2:10), so God seeks to gather the most luscious clusters of the fruit of the Spirit from the fully ripened harvest of our lives. The best of life is yet to come in our old age!

We can be sure God would not keep us on this work-a-day world of tears and joy if He did not have a worthwhile ministry for us to accomplish like in the case of Moses, Joshua, Abraham and the other great men-servants of “God (Jesus in person) who is the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). So let us keep on serving the Lord! Remember, the older we become, we acquire valuable experiences in life. “Experience is the best teacher”. Be like Moses, serve until God himself retires us.

It is worth quoting the adage favorite of Capt. Remy Celeste, our oldest FGBMFI member, “Age is a matter of the mind; if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”