OB 11:17{I suppose nobody ever naturally did like the idea of getting older, after he had at least left school. There is a sense of oppression and depression about it. The irresistible, inevitable onward march of moments and years without the possibility of one instant's pause—a march that even while on the uphill side of life is leading to the downhill side—casts an autumn-like shadow over even many a spring-birthday. But how surely the Bible gives us the bright side of everything. In this case it gives three bright sides of a fact which, without it, could not help being gloomy. First, it opens the sure prospect of increasing brightness to those who have begun to walk in the light. Even if the sun of our life has reached the apparent zenith and we have known a very noonday of mental and spiritual being, it is no poetic western shadows that are to lengthen upon our way but "our age is to be clearer than the noonday." The second bright side is increasing fruitfulness.
Do not let us confuse between works and fruit. Even when we come to the days when "the strong men shall bow themselves," there may be more pleasant fruits for our Master, riper, fuller, and sweeter than ever before. For "they shall still bring forth fruit in old age." The third bright side is the brightest of all, "Even to your old age, I am He"... "even to hoar hairs will I carry you." For we shall always be His little children and doubtless He will always be our Father. The rush of years cannot touch this.
But when the sun draws near in westering might,
Enfolding all in one transcendent blaze
Of sunset glow, we trace them not, but gaze
And wonder at the glorious holy light.
Come nearer, Sun of Righteousness! that we,
Whose swift short hours of day so swiftly run,
So overflowed with love and light may be,
So lost in glory of the nearing Sun,
That not our light, but Thine, the world may see,
New praise to Thee through our poor lives be won.