For forty-three years, Mrs Adewale sold lace and aso-oke at Oje market in Ibadan. She knew every trader in her line by name, and most of their children. She led the market women’s prayer meeting on Thursday mornings, before the stalls opened, and when there was a quarrel between traders, it was usually her shop they came to. Her husband, a retired headmaster, used to say that she ran more of Ibadan than the local government did.
He died seven years ago. She carried on. Then, at seventy-nine, she slipped on the wet floor of her bathroom and broke her hip. After surgery at the teaching hospital, the family met and decided that she could no longer live alone. Her eldest son, an engineer, brought her to his house in Magodo, Lagos, and gave her the best room upstairs, with its own bathroom and an air conditioner.
Everyone was kind. Her son prostrated to greet her every morning before work. Her daughter-in-law, who is Igbo, called her “Mama” and cooked her favourite efo riro on Sundays. The children knelt to greet her when they came home from school. In every outward way, she was honoured.
But by nine o’clock each morning the house was empty. Her son and his wife were at work. The children were at school. The housekeeper was busy downstairs. Mrs Adewale sat in her room with the air conditioner humming and the television on, a hundred and twenty kilometres from her market, her church and her friends. A young woman came twice a week to help her bathe, and every time it happened she felt a deep, wordless humiliation.
When I visited her, she was polite and composed, as women of her generation are. Then, as I was preparing to pray, she said something that has stayed with me. “Pastor, they greet me every day. They give me everything. But nobody asks me anything any more. I used to carry people. Now I am a load. What is God keeping me alive for?”
PunchlineThat question deserves a real answer. Many older believers are asking it, often silently, and the Bible has a great deal to say about it.
Honoured but alone
African cultures have much to teach the wider world about honouring the elderly. We greet our elders with respect. We do not call them by their first names. We expect children to stand when an older person enters the room, to carry their bags and to serve them first at meals. In many of our communities, elders are still consulted before major decisions, and their blessing is sought before a marriage or a journey.
This instinct agrees with Scripture. “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God” (Leviticus 19:32). Notice that the honour of the aged is connected directly with the fear of God. Proverbs adds that “The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness” (Proverbs 16:31), and that “the beauty of old men is the gray head” (Proverbs 20:29). Grey hair is presented as beauty.
But modern life is testing our traditions. Families are scattered between cities and continents. Children move to Lagos, Abuja, London or Houston for work. Houses that once held three generations now hold one or two. Older people are moved, often for very good reasons, away from the communities where they had a place and a role, into homes where everyone is busy. They are greeted, but not known. Provided for, but not consulted. Honoured on their birthdays and invited to pray at family events, but otherwise left alone.
Mrs Adewale’s question shows us that honour must include belonging. Respectful greetings are good, but they cannot replace being asked, being needed and being included. And her question also reveals a deeper fear: that her worth had depended on her usefulness, and that with her strength her purpose had gone too.
Loneliness in old age is a real affliction, and it deserves to be taken seriously. It affects sleep, appetite, memory and mood. It can make every ache feel heavier. An older person who spends most of the day alone may stop eating properly or stop taking medication, and nobody notices for weeks. Scripture describes God as One who “setteth the solitary in families” (Psalm 68:6). That is His heart, and it should be the church’s practice. Placing an elderly parent in a comfortable room is a good beginning. Setting them in a family, among people who know them and need them, is the fuller obedience.
Still bringing forth fruit
Psalm 92 is titled “A Psalm or Song for the sabbath day.” It celebrates the faithfulness of God, and near its end it gives one of the most beautiful pictures of old age in Scripture:
The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing; To shew that the LORD is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
The palm tree here is the date palm, which can live and bear fruit for a very long time. Its roots go deep enough to reach water in dry places. The cedar of Lebanon was the great tree of the ancient world, tall, fragrant and long-lived. The psalmist chooses two trees famous for endurance.
Notice where they are planted: “in the house of the LORD.” Their flourishing comes from their location. They draw their life from God’s presence. That is why the next line is possible: “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.” The word still is precious. Fruitfulness does not end at retirement or after a fall. The King James phrase “fat and flourishing” means full of sap and green, alive and vigorous in the ways that matter.
Then the psalmist tells us what the fruit is for: “To shew that the LORD is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” The fruit of old age is testimony. An older believer who has walked with God for decades is living evidence that God is faithful. Their life says to the younger generation: He kept me. He did not fail me. He is my rock.
This changes the question of purpose. Fruit is different from productivity. A believer in old age may no longer run a business, lead a ministry or travel to visit the sick. But fruit can still grow: patience, prayer, wisdom, blessing, a settled trust that younger believers can see and lean on. The palm tree does not apologise for being unable to do what a young sapling does. It bears the fruit of its season.
Carried from the womb to grey hairs
Isaiah 46 opens with a striking image. The prophet describes the idols of Babylon, Bel and Nebo, being loaded onto animals and carried away as the city falls. The gods that were supposed to carry their people have become a burden on weary beasts. Then God speaks to Israel:
Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by me from the belly, which are carried from the womb: And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you .
The contrast is deliberate. The idols have to be carried. The living God carries His people. And He has done it all their lives: “borne by me from the belly... carried from the womb.” Then the promise reaches forward to the end: “And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you.”
Look at the verbs in verse 4. I have made. I will bear. I will carry. I will deliver. God takes full responsibility for the life He created. He does not hand older believers over to someone else’s care once they are no longer strong. He who carried you as an infant will carry you as an old man or an old woman. The God of your youth is the God of your grey hairs.
That truth speaks directly to Mrs Adewale’s fear of being a load. In God’s eyes, being carried is not shameful. It is how He has related to His people from the beginning. Every one of us was carried before we could walk, and every one of us has been carried by grace ever since. Old age simply makes visible what was always true.
The honesty of loss
Scripture does not pretend that old age is easy. One of the most honest passages about ageing comes from an old man named Barzillai. When David fled from Absalom’s rebellion, Barzillai had provided food and supplies for the king and his men. After the rebellion ended, David invited him to come and live at the royal court in Jerusalem. This was Barzillai’s reply:
And Barzillai said unto the king, How long have I to live, that I should go up with the king unto Jerusalem? I am this day fourscore years old: and can I discern between good and evil? can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king? Thy servant will go a little way over Jordan with the king: and why should the king recompense it me with such a reward? Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father and of my mother. But behold thy servant Chimham; let him go over with my lord the king; and do to him what shall seem good unto thee.
Barzillai is eighty, and he names his losses frankly. His judgement is not what it was: “can I discern between good and evil?” His sense of taste has dulled. His hearing has faded so that he cannot enjoy the singers. And then he says the word that so many older people use: burden. “Wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king?”
The Bible lets him say all of that without correction. There is no rebuke for his honesty, and no pressure to pretend he is as strong as he once was. Ecclesiastes describes the same process in poetry: “the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened” (Ecclesiastes 12:3). Trembling hands, bent backs, missing teeth, dimming eyes. Scripture is realistic.
So older believers are free to grieve what they have lost. Mrs Adewale can miss her market, her husband, her strong legs and her friends. Those losses are real, and grief over them is not ingratitude. The psalmist prayed, “Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth” (Psalm 71:9). That is a prayer from someone who felt the fear of being set aside, and it is in the Bible for people who feel the same.
But notice what Barzillai did next. He did not simply withdraw. He offered someone in his place: “But behold thy servant Chimham; let him go over with my lord the king.” Chimham was probably his son. Barzillai could no longer go himself, so he sent the next generation, with his blessing. Even in the honest naming of his limits, he found a way to give.
NuggetYou are allowed to grieve what age has taken. And you are still able to give, because the God who carried you from the womb is still bringing forth fruit in you.
Another shall gird thee
After His resurrection, Jesus restored Peter by the Sea of Galilee. Then He said something about Peter’s future that has comforted many older believers:
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.
John explains in the next verse that Jesus was signifying “by what death he should glorify God” (John 21:19), referring to Peter’s martyrdom. But the words themselves describe the movement of every long life. When you are young, you dress yourself and go where you want. When you are old, you stretch out your hands, and someone else dresses you and takes you where you would not have chosen to go.
Notice that Jesus says this to Peter in the context of glorifying God. The season of being helped is not a season outside God’s purposes. Peter would glorify God precisely as one who was girded and carried by others.
That gives dignity to receiving help. For Mrs Adewale, the hardest moments were in the bathroom, accepting help with something she had done for herself all her life. There is no way to make that easy. But there is a way to see it differently. To stretch out your hands and let another gird you can be an act of humility and trust. Jesus Himself allowed His feet to be anointed by a woman’s tears, and was carried as an infant in Mary’s arms. Receiving care is not beneath the people of God.
This also says something to those who give the care. Gird gently. Preserve privacy. Ask before you help. Speak to the older person, not over their head to someone else in the room. Let them make as many of their own decisions as they can. The aim of good care is to support dignity, not to remove it.
And it says something to older believers about honesty. Many elderly parents hide their needs because they do not want to be a burden. They do not mention the pain in their chest, the fall they had last week, the medicine that has run out. Please tell your family the truth. Letting others help you is a gift to them as well as to you.
Outward perishing, inward renewing
Paul wrote to the Corinthians as a man whose body had been battered by years of hardship. He had been beaten, stoned, shipwrecked and imprisoned. He knew what it was to feel his physical strength wearing away. And he wrote this:
For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
“Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” Paul describes two processes happening at the same time. The outward person is decaying. That is simply true, and Paul does not deny it. But the inward person is being renewed daily. As the body weakens, the inner life can deepen, strengthen and grow more like Christ.
That is why he says “we faint not.” The decline of the body does not have to mean the decline of the person. Many of the most spiritually alive people I have known were frail in body. Their voices were soft, their steps slow, but their prayer was strong and their faith was clear.
Paul calls his affliction “light” and “but for a moment,” which is remarkable language from a man who had suffered so much. He could only say it because he was weighing it against “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” And he could only see that glory because he was looking “not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.”
For an older believer, this is the great hope. The body that is wearing out will not be the final body. “The things which are seen are temporal.” The weakened legs, the dim eyes, the failing memory: all of these are temporary. What is unseen, the life of Christ within and the glory to come, is eternal. Old age brings the believer closer to the day when “this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53). The years are not running out so much as running home.
The ministry of older believers
Paul’s letter to Titus gives older believers a clear calling within the church:
But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine: That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
Paul addresses the “aged men” and the “aged women” directly, and he does not treat them as retired from service. Older men are to be sober, grave, temperate and “sound in faith, in charity, in patience.” Older women are to be “teachers of good things,” and they are given a specific ministry: to teach the younger women. The details of what they teach reflect the household life of Paul’s day, and believers apply some of those details in different ways today. But the principle is plain. Older believers have something the church needs, and the younger generation should be learning from them.
That ministry rarely requires a microphone. It happens in kitchens, at bedsides, over the phone, in quiet conversations after church. It happens when an older woman tells a young mother, “I also struggled when my children were small. This is what helped me.” It happens when an older man sits with a young husband and says, “Let me tell you what I learned in my marriage.”
Scripture gives us vivid examples. Anna, a widow of about eighty-four, “departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day” (Luke 2:37). When the infant Jesus was brought in, she recognised Him and “spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). Her ministry was prayer and testimony, and she was one of the first to proclaim the Messiah. The psalmist prayed, “Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation” (Psalm 71:18). He saw his old age as a time for passing on what God had done.
Older believers can pray for the church by name. They can tell the stories of God’s faithfulness that younger believers have never heard. They can offer counsel from long experience: “With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding” (Job 12:12). And they can bless. When Jacob was old and nearly blind, Joseph brought his sons to him, and Jacob kissed them, embraced them and blessed them (Genesis 48:10). A grandparent’s blessing remains one of the most powerful gifts a family can receive.
Not every older believer will be able to do all of this. Some live with dementia, severe pain or exhaustion, and their season may be one of being cared for almost entirely. That does not reduce their worth in the slightest. Their value was never based on what they could produce. They remain loved, carried and precious to God, and their presence among us is itself a call to faithfulness.
A household for every season
What should families and churches do in light of all this?
Families can honour elders by including them as well as greeting them. Ask their opinion. Tell them what is happening in your lives. Sit with them in the evening, even for twenty minutes. Paul tells children to “requite their parents” (1 Timothy 5:4), which means to give back to them what they once gave. That includes money and medicine, but it also includes time, conversation and attention.
Churches can make sure older members are not forgotten when they can no longer attend. Visit them. Arrange transport. Record their testimonies. Invite them to pray for specific needs and then tell them how God answered. Create ways for younger and older believers to meet, so that the ministry of Titus 2 can actually happen.
Churches and families must also protect the elderly. In some communities, older women in particular have been accused of witchcraft when a family suffers misfortune, and some have been driven from their homes, beaten or abandoned. Such accusations are cruel, and they have no place among the people of God. Others suffer quieter harm: relatives who take their pension or property, carers who neglect them, families who stop visiting once the inheritance is settled. Scripture calls God the defender of the widow (Psalm 68:5). If you know of an older person who is being abused, exploited or neglected, do not look away. Speak to church leaders, involve trusted family members, and where necessary seek help from the appropriate authorities.
Older believers can resist the temptation to withdraw. Keep in touch with friends by phone. Keep reading Scripture, even if only a few verses a day, or listen to it read aloud. Keep praying for others. Tell your family what you need. Accept the walking frame or the hearing aid, and let your doctor help with pain and medication. And give yourself permission not to be equally productive in every season. Some seasons are for planting, some for harvest, and some for resting in the shade of what God has grown.
PunchlineA few weeks after my visit, Mrs Adewale’s fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Amarachi, was given a school assignment: interview an older relative about life in Nigeria in the 1960s. She came up to her grandmother’s room with a notebook, expecting to stay twenty minutes. She stayed three hours.
Mrs Adewale told her about the market, about the year the price of lace doubled and the traders prayed together for a week, about meeting her husband, about the night she nearly lost her first son to fever and the old pastor who came on a bicycle at midnight to pray. Amarachi wrote it all down. Then she asked, “Mama, can I come back on Saturday?”
She did. And the Saturday visits became a habit. Somewhere along the way, Amarachi began asking her grandmother to pray for her exams, then for her friends, then about a boy at school. The church, hearing about it, asked Mrs Adewale to pray every week for the young people by name. They send her the list on her phone each Monday, and she telephones some of them on their birthdays.
She still misses Ibadan. She still finds the bathroom hard. She told me so, honestly, the last time I saw her. But she also said this: “Pastor, I used to think God kept me alive to be fed. Now I know He kept me to be fruitful. I am still carried. But I am also still carrying.”
If you are in your later years, God has not set you aside. He carried you from the womb, and He will carry you to the end. You may grieve what has changed, and you may need more help than you once did. Receive it with grace. And bring forth the fruit of your season, to show that the Lord is upright. He is your rock.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- How does your family or church honour older people, and where might honour need to grow into belonging?
- What does Psalm 92 suggest about the difference between productivity and fruitfulness?
- Barzillai named his losses honestly. What losses of ageing, in your own life or in someone you love, need to be acknowledged before God?
- Why might it be hard to “stretch forth thy hands” and receive help? What would help you, or someone you care for, to receive it with dignity?
- Who is an older believer whose wisdom you have not yet asked for? What might you learn from them?
This Week
If you are older, choose one younger person this week and share a story of God’s faithfulness from your own life, by phone or in person, and ask how you can pray for them. Tell a family member honestly about one need you have been keeping to yourself. If you are younger, visit or call an older believer, ask them a real question about their life and faith, and listen to the answer. Then ask them to pray for one specific matter in your life, and tell them later how God answered.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that You have carried me from the womb and that You will carry me to the end. Thank You for every season of my life, the strong years and the weaker ones. I bring You the losses that age has brought, and I ask You to comfort me in them. Give me grace to receive help with humility, and to let others gird me when I can no longer gird myself. Renew my inward man day by day. Let me still bring forth fruit in old age, to show that You are upright. Help me to pass on Your faithfulness to the next generation. And teach Your church to honour, include and love every older believer. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.