One of the sweetest things about being a nursing-home volunteer is seeing how the residents come to love one another, or at least look out for each other's well-being--often behind the backs of those in charge. We youngsters could probably all learn a lesson from them! Here's a scene illustrating that point from The Song of Sadie Sparrow.

Sadie Sparrow
Sunday, March 25
 
Sadie and Gladys brunched together on Sunday, enjoying a feast of fresh strawberries and blackberries, French toast with maple syrup, bacon that was every bit as crisp as any Sadie had ever had, as much orange juice as they wanted, and coffee that tasted like something you’d get at a fancy cafe.
           
Gladys shocked Sadie by calling the meal “good” and then shocked her again by pointing out that Marcia at Table Nine was on “the thick stuff.”
           
“Do you mean thickened liquids?” Sadie was ashamed that she’d let that subject slip to the back burner in recent days, her new spiritual life and time with Jamie being foremost on her mind.
          
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Gladys sniffed, “although I don’t know why you always have to make everything so complicated. Pretending to be something you’re not.”
           
“‘Thick stuff’ is just fine with me,” Sadie said, humbled by the rebuke. “So how did you find out?”
           
One of Gladys’s nicer traits was her willingness to leave a hurt behind. “Before you got here, I heard her complaining about it to the servers. But they wouldn’t help her. I think it’s a crime.”
           
“A crime?”
           
“Without a doubt.” Gladys lowered her voice and glanced back over her shoulders to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “It kills people, you know. If you don’t get enough to drink, you get fuzzy headed and then you die. I’ve seen it happen again and again.”
           
Gladys had lived at The Hickories for several years, and Sadie didn’t doubt that she knew a lot more than she let on.
           
“Have any of your—have you known anyone who’s been on it?”
           
Gladys eyed Sadie up before answering. “My friends, you mean? Were you assuming I haven’t had any friends here?”
           
“No, of course not, I just meant—”
           
“I’ll have you know that I’ve had plenty of friends here. It’s just that they’ve all died or gone home.”
           
“Of course you have.” Sadie felt her face flush; she’d been caught red-handed. She quickly changed gears. “So have any of them been on the thick stuff?”
           
“Yes, and they’ve all died within weeks, except for one. Her name was Ida—she lived next door to me. She survived for two years on the stuff, finally had a coronary.”
           
“Well, then, if Ida made it that long, maybe it’s not so bad after all,” said Sadie, hoping for a silver lining.
           
Gladys looked around for eavesdroppers again. “It’s not so bad if someone is sneaking you water and soda every day,” she whispered. “I kept her supplied.”
           
“Why Gladys,” Sadie whispered back, impressed. “You really do have a heart, don’t you?”
           
Gladys glared at her. “Don’t you dare tell anyone.”

--The Song of Sadie Sparrow, pages  227-228

Of all the people suffering during this horrific nationwide lockdown, the institutionalized elderly are no doubt hurting most of all. Those in long-term-care facilities are largely isolated from everyone but their gowned-and-masked caregivers. Friends may be allowed to visit through open windows; family members, for a brief time outside as long as they are wearing masks and are maintaining proper social distancing. It's hard to imagine the loneliness, heartache and hopelessness these dear old folks must be feeling these days, especially when there's no end in sight. 

But as I reflected on their trials during my morning walk today, I remembered that Scripture contains the solution to every problem we humans may encounter in our fallen world. And what popped into my mind next was the memory of a message I heard several years ago during the Christian Music Hour at Care-Age of Brookfield--a message prepared and delivered by our five-star preacher Chris Carrillo, who had been providing the residents of Care-age with knowledge, wisdom, and eternal hope for many years, until COVID-19 shut us down last March. 

In this short sermon, Chris explained how one heavy-hearted woman overcame her bitter disappointment and sorrow, with eternally significant results. It’s the story of Hannah, as told in the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel. Here is Chris's message, ready to inspire anyone who is suffering through any sort of intense and prolonged trial.  

The following prayer was supposedly written by an aging 17th century nun, although I find that attribution a little hard to believe. Still, these are wonderful thoughts to ride into old age, where it can be harder than ever to make and keep good friends.
 
Lord, thou knowest better than I know myself that I am old and growing older.
 
Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion.
 
Release me from craving to straighten out everybody's affairs.
 
Make me thoughtful but not moody, helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom it seems a pity not to use it all, but Thou knowest, Lord, that I want a few friends at the end.
 
Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.
 
Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by.
 
I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of other's aches and pains, but help me to endure them with patience.
 
I dare not ask for improved memory, but rather I ask for a growing humility and a lessening cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others.
 
Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.
 
Keep me reasonably sweet. A sour old person is one of the crowning works of the Devil.
 
Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places and talents in unexpected people. And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.
 
I ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen! ​

For all but the perennially unhappy among us, aging offers each of us some truly sparkling silver linings. The specifics no doubt depend upon your unique circumstances. But allow me to share some of my personal favorites—perhaps you’ll be inspired to start or expand your own list. 

So here goes. The older I get:

• The less my lack of coordination matters. In grade school, I was always last pick for baseball teams, even when my supremely athletic best friends were the designated captains; couldn’t hit the ball, you see, in spite of all the hours my beloved daddy spent trying to teach me. I finally left the shame permanently behind at age 50,  realizing that I would never again be asked to wield a bat.
• The more I enjoy rereading favorite old books. When it comes to pleasure-filled reading, there are advantages to being forgetful. For instance, I can now read an Agatha Christie mystery for the second or third time and be every bit as surprised by whodunit as I was the first time through.
• The less I worry about my appearance. Whereas looking “cute” or “attractive” or “thin” was once a top priority in my life, these days looking “clean” is good enough. 
• The fewer unpleasant or difficult things populate my To Do list. For example, a few years ago, I awoke to the fact that I’ll never again have to make a speech, squeeze into a swimsuit, or interview a gaggle of radiologists about the clinical implications of some great new cardiac CT software.
• The less worried I am about concealing my politically incorrect opinions. For us senior citizens, there's no longer any need to get into a good school or land a plum job, so why hold back? (Of course, if we continue marching down the road to tyranny, I may one day be arrested for thought crimes; but “life in prison” isn’t quite the threat it would have been a few decades ago.)

 
And for the born-again Christian, the advantages of advancing age are positively overwhelming.  
 
For one thing, there’s no longer much sting associated with evangelistic rejection. In fact, every year it becomes easier to share my faith with an unbeliever. Perhaps he thinks I’m nuts for believing in a literal Genesis and Jonah, or incredibly narrow-minded for insisting that there’s only one route to heaven. And maybe she’s self-righteously offended that I have forced my “religion” on a person as good as she is. That’s okay with me; just so they somehow retain these seeds of truth until the Lord succeeds in breaking their stubborn hearts to make way for the gospel.
 
Even more important, old age means never having to say you’re worried—not even about the most highly touted disease du jour. For born-again believers in Jesus Christ, the sky is never falling; a heavenly forever awaits each of us at journey’s end.  
 
And that's the most precious silver lining of all.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
 
This is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible. It’s transformational and transcendent, and it reminds me daily that, no matter how hopeless today’s problems may seem, those of us who belong to Jesus Christ needn’t worry; after all, this world is not our home.
 
Having instant access to such divine wisdom is one of the most wonderful things about being a born-again Christian steeped in the word of God. I’ve written often about the difference that word makes in troubled lives, particularly for those living in nursing homes. But today I'd like to revisit a memoir that really magnifies this truth. 
 
The book is Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place (Chosen Books, 1971), the story of a family of Christians who, during World War II, risked everything to hide Jews in their home near Amsterdam – and were inevitably caught by the murderous Nazis. The Hiding Place had been sitting on my Must Read stack for years before making it to the top of the pile (and the top of my Favorite Books list) thanks to a lovely Christian book club I was privileged to belong to.
 
One of my favorite passages appears on pages 194 and 195 in Bantam’s 1974 edition. Here, Corrie wrote about her ministry to women sharing a barracks in the Ravensbruck concentration camp where she and her sister Betsie were imprisoned for their crimes.  Corrie had miraculously smuggled a Bible into their quarters, and a nasty flea infestation kept the squeamish Nazi officers from interfering with their times of fellowship and worship.
 
Here’s how she described it:
 
“As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.’
 
“I would look about us as Betsie read, watching the light leap from face to face. More than conquerors . . . It was not a wish. It was a fact. We knew it, we experienced it minute by minute – poor, hated, hungry. We are more than conquerors. Not ‘we shall be.’ We are! Life in Ravensbruck took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. One, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. The other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory.”
 
I believe the Lord uses all our experiences – including the misery, pain, fear and hopelessness suffered by those locked away in prisons of all kinds – to draw us to Himself, to help us to understand that “things that are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” If you’d like a page-turning reminder of this truth, and you haven’t yet read it, I hope you’ll dive into The Hiding Place just as soon as possible. Then please, once long-term care facilities have re-opened to visitors, consider sharing what you've learned with someone who calls such a residence "home." ​