Forever Young (click to comment)

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I love visiting old people. They make me feel young. But all of us are aging. In the grocery store one day a guy asked my wife if it’s her dad who writes those books. I threw my dentures at him. If there was a quick, inexpensive fix for wrinkles, baldness, aches, pains and the heckling I receive from my younger friends, I’d be tempted to get on my scooter and go stand in line. Ah, to be 23 again. At 23, I was a well conditioned figure of vitality and machismo. Stuff worked. I jogged past elderly people knowing I had centuries before I got as old as them. Then oldness happened. And there is no reversing it.

The dream of living forever is a popular theme in myths, literature and movies. Remember Arwen the half-Elven maiden in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” who renounces eternal life to marry her mortal sweetheart, Aragorn. Arwen dies shortly after Aragorn, at the ripe old age of 2,901. If we’d like to live this long perhaps we should look to a jellyfish. Researchers have named one species the “immortal Jellyfish.” According to National Geographic, the adult jellyfish will revert back into a youthful “blob-like cyst” which then grows into a polyp colony. From there, this polyp colony develops back into a normal Jellyfish adult. Cool. This ability quote “allows the jellyfish to bypass death, rendering it biologically immortal.” One researcher commented: “The immortal medusa is the most miraculous species in the entire animal kingdom. I believe it will be easy to solve the mystery of immortality and apply ultimate life to human beings.”

That’s quite a leap. And ultimate life? Most other researches aren’t so optimistic, but what if it were true? What if you had the option of ultimate life here on earth? You’d never grow old. And every single day you would roll out of bed whistlin’ “What a Wonderful World” and feeling like a 23-year-old. But living long is no substitute for living well. People who live well have purpose in their lives, their eyes aren’t fixed on the stuff of earth, but on a world that’s to come. We will live forever. Not because we eat spinach or ride stair machines though I applaud these activities and have attempted them myself. But because Philippians 3 tells us: “We are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own.”

So instead of obsessing about the way we feel today, let’s live well today. Let’s live with a beautiful spirit modelled after the life Jesus modelled. And the next time you see a cocky 23-year-old jogging past, just keep your dentures in your mouth and thank God for the purpose He gives.

Phil Callaway

Phil Callaway, the host of Laugh Again, is an award-winning author and speaker, known worldwide for his humorous yet perceptive look at life.

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