May 29, 2025 - Good Morning! It’s Thursday, May 29.
Our focus today is on age and presidents and apostles and love.
The U.S. Constitution sets the minimum age for president at 35. This is a bit surprising when you consider that when that document was written, the average lifespan in America . . . was 35! But the national conversation lately has been about the other end of the age spectrum. Who was the first president to be over 70 at his inauguration? That would be Donald Trump in 2017. Which president was the oldest at the end of his term? That would be Joe Biden in 2025. And that record will be broken by Trump four years from now.
Questions arise about the effects of age on energy and stamina, not to mention decision making and cognitive ability. The playwright Oscar Wilde famously said, “with age comes wisdom.” In my experience, that is a distinct possibility, but not a definite guarantee. Age will, I’m sure, continue to be a political hot topic in the years to come. Will the pendulum swing at the next election and bring us a youthful president? Time will tell.
The average lifespan in the 1st Century - New Testament times - was under 30. But there were many who lived longer lives, and some much longer. The Apostle John is thought to have lived into his nineties, an extraordinary feat for that era. John wrote four books of the Bible, his gospel and three letters. And he wrote them, historians believe, in the last period of his life - probably in his eighties. How amazing to have your greatest moment of achievement in your final chapter.
The young John is described in the gospel of Mark as a “Son of Thunder”. In Luke we’re told that, when he was angered, he asked Jesus if he could “rain fire” down on his enemies. But the old John, that we meet through his writings, seems to have become a very different person. He uses the word “love” over a hundred times in his four books. And in 1 John 3:16 (a nice bit of numerical symmetry) he says - “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
The Son of Thunder, in his old age, had become the Apostle of Love.
Meet you back here tomorrow,
David
cindertex50@yahoo.com
