Job 13:28

Wasting away like a wine skin,

   Like a garment devoured by the moth –

 

I almost blocked someone on Facebook today. Turns out we aren’t friends, so I didn’t get that satisfaction; but I am glad to know we are not. I have never liked this person, but in a rare look at Facebook I found they had posted something I found offensive, and I am happy to say that now I have a reason to back up the dislike I have had for them ever since we met. My original issue I could point to was not in keeping with the person I want to be, so I tried.

‘Wasting’ was also ‘wears’, ‘is consumed’, and ‘decays’. Several sources had a noun to start the stitch, but I think it was not included in the original as it was implied from the context. ‘Wine skin’ was ‘rotten thing’ and ‘rot’.

‘Devoured’ was ‘eaten’ in every source except my favorite.

My neighbor fell the other day and he looked really old when we saw him the next day. Another neighbor was out cleaning the garage and he looked really old. This is all in additional to my other neighbor who is only a couple years older than me, but seems to have the body of an old man. My father-in-law is 91 and still drove to the casinos after the hurricane to get away from his place that did not have AC. If he can do that, then why do all these other guys seem so old?

When I was young, I read the Bible and since I am a numbers person, the idea of a life span of 120 years was fixed as the goal. Even as a kid, I knew most people did not live that long, but my wife read a blurb about some 120ish year-old woman being the oldest living American and wearing a tiara at her party. I do not want to wear a tiara for my birthday, but I did wonder what did her day look like the day after her birthday. I also wondered how different a day in my life ought to be vs. what a day in the life of other ‘old’ people might be.

My new goal is to put those things in my life that will allow me to be healthy if I do indeed reach 120 and to take those things out that might get in the way. My car would be 92 years old at that point, so hopefully I can still drive it (and afford to). My point in all this is that our bodies are not given to us to last forever, but if we care for them and are fortunate in other ways, we can still live productive lives at a ‘ripe old age’. My question is what does your day look like the day after you turn 117? Be awful to live that long without a purpose.  Living that long also makes a lot of the stuff in our lives now seem pointless, like Facebook ‘friends’.

I know I should not be happy to dislike someone, but at least this way I can pray about their issues and my reaction to them as opposed to my own difficulty in judging them.

Written 7/29/2024. Posted 8/22/24, Job 311