In her book “So Who’ s Afraid of Birthdays?”, the late Brethren matriarch Anna Mow (who at the time of the writing was in her mid 70s) wrote the following: “Life is more exciting and fulfilling (now) than ever. So birthdays don’t count, it is life that counts!” She definitely wasn’t in favor of retirement. Nor is Tony Campolo, the noted Christian sociologist, television personality and author. “In fact,” he says, ‘I don’t intend to retire until they carry me out in a box, throw ground on my face, and then go back to the church to eat potato salad!”
It’s true that age isn’t always a factor in a person’s success or failure. Consider these famous examples: Golda Meir was 71 when she became prime minister of Israel. Actor George Burns won his first Oscar at age 80. At age 96, playwright George Bernard Shaw broke his leg when he fell out of a tree he was trimming in his backyard. Michelangelo was 71 when he painted the Pauline Chapel. Doc Counsilman, at 58, became the oldest person ever to swim the English Channel. Casey Stengel didn’t retire from managing the New York Mets until he was 75. S. I. Hayakawa retired as president of San Francisco’s University at 70, and then was elected to the U. S. Senate. Physician and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer was still performing surgeries in his African hospital at age 89. Painter Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was 80 years old; in fact, she completed over 1,500 paintings after that, with 25% of those being produced when she was past 100!
There is also the biblical example of Moses, who was called by God at age 80 to lead the Jewish nation out of Egyptian bondage. The venerated Moses gave marvelous leadership for the next forty years! Deuteronomy 34:7 reads, “Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.”
So are you too old to try something new? Probably not! Wrote the poet Robert Browning: “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be…”