The Threat of Years
William Barclay:
Older men often speak, with a knowing smile, of the naive idealism of younger men.
Maybe the diagnosis of error is being directed to the wrong generation.
If the Bible's pervasive teaching of strength through weakness, victory through defeat, is true, then maybe the disillusioning setbacks that pile up over the years of a life are meant to stoke, not extinguish, youthful idealistic dreams of a supernatural life, a life that is a miracle, a life not explainable by the world's categories.
O for more naive idealism.
One reason I love my dad is his steadfast refusal to let the years of life beat out of him a longing for and belief in and vision of what God might do in his generation, and through his own life.
The years have a way of taking our ideals away, of making us satisfied with less and less, of lowering our standards, of accustoming us to defeat. . . . There is no threat so dangerous and so insidious, as the threat of years to a man’s ideals.--William Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Westminster 1960); 245-46; HT: Kent Hughes, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: To Guard the Deposit (Crossway 2000), 260
Older men often speak, with a knowing smile, of the naive idealism of younger men.
Maybe the diagnosis of error is being directed to the wrong generation.
If the Bible's pervasive teaching of strength through weakness, victory through defeat, is true, then maybe the disillusioning setbacks that pile up over the years of a life are meant to stoke, not extinguish, youthful idealistic dreams of a supernatural life, a life that is a miracle, a life not explainable by the world's categories.
O for more naive idealism.
One reason I love my dad is his steadfast refusal to let the years of life beat out of him a longing for and belief in and vision of what God might do in his generation, and through his own life.