There’s a very nice documentary underway in Seattle. Called “Present Perfect,” it features the interaction of very young children and very old nursing-home residents. ​

It looks like it's being very nicely done, and I found the filmmaker’s motives interesting. “I was curious to observe these two groups occupying opposite ends of the life spectrum,” she wrote, “to see firsthand what it meant for them to simply be present with each other.  Shooting this film and embedding myself in the nursing home environment also allowed me to see with new eyes just how generationally segregated we’ve become as a society. ”
 
Or, as the founder of this program explained, “It’s the experience of life in a multigenerational, interdependent, richly complex community that, more than anything else, teaches us how to be human.” 
 
Do we really need help learning how to be human? Maybe so, as we see 2 Timothy 3:1-7   play out across the nation and around the world.
 
But it strikes me that this story is really about children with their lives stretching out before them, loaded with the hope of lifelong happiness – and about the elderly, with their lives stretching out behind them, any remaining hope of happiness just about dashed.
 
What a shame it is to look at it this way. Because after all, at least some of these old folk are standing on the threshold of something far more wonderful than anything this life has to offer:  the ultimate, permanent and supremely joyful eternity awaiting anyone who belongs to Jesus Christ.
 
Doesn’t this suggest that what’s really important, for people of any age, is to embrace the confident expectation of a heavenly eternity?
 
I wish the best for all those involved in this project. Even more, I pray that each one will repent and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, so they can all look forward to everlasting joy in His kingdom.  

I know a woman who asks, during every pause in the conversation, “What time is it?” Yet her recall of the Bible is uncanny – instant, complete, accurate, and almost always 100% pertinent to the discussion.
 
Another sweet old friend comments repeatedly about the beauty of her surroundings and the kindness of her caregivers – same words, delivered with the same radiantly engaging smile, time and time again. But show her an 80-year-old photo of her extended family and she’ll fill you in on all the details of each member’s life.
 
If you’ve spent much time with the very aged, you’re no doubt familiar with this sort of collapse of short-term memory. And if you’re getting up there in years yourself, you’re probably beginning to identify with those who are already well into this journey.
 
For those who have yet to experience it, it’s hard to describe.
 
Maybe it’s like losing your Random Access Memory (and probably some other kinds of memory, too. I used to understand all this but I forget.) You can’t instantly recall what was said 10 minutes ago, or even 10 seconds ago. That information is available only via a thorough search of your memory bank – except that before long, you can’t remember what you were searching for.
 
Or maybe it’s more like when you’re falling asleep and random, disjointed thoughts begin cascading through your mind, each one blotting out the last, making you wonder repeatedly, “where was I going with that thought?”  Except that when you’re suffering from short-term memory loss, you can experience this when you’re wide awake.
 
Can anything be done about it?  Simply trying harder doesn’t help; either there’s no longer a viable storage spot for new information, or the librarian in charge of storing and retrieving that information is on permanent hiatus.  There’s some hope that mentally stimulating exercises like crossword puzzles will at least delay memory decline, but the jury still seems to be out on that score.
 
I say all this because I’ve lately been noticing some eye-rolling and whispering in the presence of such mental lapses – the same sort of eye-rolling and whispering I no doubt did in my younger days, when the possibility of personal aging never crossed my mind.
 
This is just a gentle reminder, for those whose memories are still intact, that there but for the grace of God go any of us.  Please be kind.

Some time ago, on a morning talk show, I saw a couple of fathers disagreeing about whether it’s a school’s job to punish kids or the parents’ job. At issue was some school making young graffiti artists remove the “work” they’d “created” in the bathroom.
 
Really? You need to argue about this?
 
To find the wisest solution, all we need to do is to look at how schools handled such unpleasantness back in the 1950s – the last decade of sanity in this country. Pupils in Eisenhower’s America didn’t even get away with chewing gum or talking in class. Disrespect could be met with a swat on the bottom. After-school punishments ranged from being forced to sit at your desk reviewing the day’s most boring lesson (pure torture even in the middle of winter) to standing outside, cleaning erasers (by clapping them together, not on the side of the school building). Even passing notes could earn you a trip to the principal’s office and a call home to parents who greeted such misbehavior with grounding or removal of telephone privileges.
 
Things have obviously changed a lot since then, and not for the better. So why don’t 21st century educators and parents look to the past to figure out what’s gone wrong, and how to make it right again?
 
I suppose one answer is that it’s not that simple. Our entire culture is collapsing, perhaps beyond repair, starting with the epidemic of broken homes and parents who simply don’t care about their children’s futures.   
 
But isn’t that all the more reason for documenting the past, and coming up with a plan for reconstructing it, while its architects are still around to tell us all about it?  
 
A solid first step would be visiting some nursing-home residents and asking them what it was like to grow up or raise children in the 1940s or 1950s. I can almost guarantee that you’ll have a great time learning about the good old days. And you might just walk away with some ammunition for launching a counter-revolution in your own family or community.