I recently heard an excellent sermon on the call of Moses when he encountered God at a burning bush (Exodus 3:1–7). I have preached on this many times myself. For the longest time we have seen this call at age 80 as a special case. We expect that most people would receive their call earlier in life. When I heard the sermon this time, it dawned on me that, increasingly, Moses’ experience of being called at 80 may be becoming the new normal.
The fact is many of us will be living longer. That means those struggling with health concerns like dementia and Parkinson’s will also be on the rise. We must be utterly clear that we will do our best by them. But it also does mean that there will be more of those who will be healthy. Here is one statistic:
In the Grant Study men, in fact, for a long time there seemed to be so little cognitive decline that we did not even begin testing them for cognitive function until they were eighty. At that time 91 percent of them tested at normal levels. Of the seventy men who have so far survived to reach ninety, fifty-eight were cognitively intact at that age, and had showed over the preceding 10 years an average decline of only one point on the 41-point Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (or TICS). (1)
And while some physical abilities may show the effects of age, it is also true that many of those who grow older are also in fairly good physical health.
As for our spiritual health, God’s expectation is that His people will grow in Christlike maturity until they see Jesus (1 John 3:1–3). And of course there is no use-by date for spiritual gifts.
What it means is that many Third Agers (those age 60 and older) should still be actively serving the Lord. Indeed, this may be the ideal stage of life to discover or revisit one’s calling. The Second Age (ages 30 to 60) is often defined by many duties where we do what we need to do, not what we may have been called to do. The Lord understands this. But in our Third Age we may now be free of the need to raise children, care for aged parents, do a necessary 9–5 to put food on the table, or even to care for a spouse. This may not apply to all of us of course, but for some of us we now have resources of time, money, and wisdom. We need to ask, how do we steward these resources?
The trouble is, many at this stage of life may not feel the responsibility and obligation to give themselves fully to meaningful vocational engagement. After all, they have reached the “retirement” stage of life and will tell everyone “you’re not the boss of me now. I can spend all my time playing golf and travelling. I don’t have to be confronting Pharaoh or any other ministry.” They will say, “This is my time and I will decide what to do and not do.”
But for followers of Jesus, it is never our time. We belong to Jesus. We were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). And at whatever age, we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. And to love our neighbour as ourselves (Matthew 22:34–40). Indeed, we shouldn’t be waiting to be ambushed by burning bushes. We should begin each day by praying, “Lord I am Yours. What assignment do You have for me?”
I believe that when we live lives of purpose we will be truly alive until the day we graduate to the life to come. Of course our capacity to work and our energy levels may no longer be the same as before. I find that I can do most of the stuff I normally do but I need more downtime. The point is not to moan about what we cannot do but to do what we can. God knows what we can do and He will hold us accountable for that.
God willing, I hope to put together a programme to help Third Agers discover/rediscover their callings. I think I can do some serious work on this in the third quarter of 2025. Appreciate prayer and suggestions. Many Third Agers are not a problem to be solved. They are an army waiting to be mobilised.
(1) George E. Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience (Cambridge, MA: The BELKNAP Press, 2012), 228.