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5 Oct 2025

 

Making Sense

The aging process is a universal experience. Our years take a toll on each of us. Even those who spend time and money fending off the signs of their years eventually experience the telling wages of aging.

Elderhood does bring clunky ailments and awkward realities … but … aging also offers distinct benefits and timely insights into life’s point and purpose. Several of these thoughts have focused my thinking of late; reassuring themes and gratifying truths which grant me a goodly dose of solace as my years remind me of my limits.

For Starters …

So, as our years nudge us along, elderhood does bring certain questions to the forefront of wonderment. One question is this: What will we face when (in Hamlet’s words) we enter “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

Though we seldom speak of it, we all wonder what death will bring, what lies beyond this life. We wonder what is ahead for us when we step into the Unknown; when we are called by our Creator to put aside our present cares and hopes; when we face God and behold the Eternal Now which is home to all souls, which is our final home.

This wonderment presupposes some measure of religious Faith, that we are not estranged from the fact that Creation and God, our Creator, are realities we cannot ignore - even though some folks ignore God, disparage the evidence of His Creation and, thus, stifle their soul’s need to prepare for the “undiscovered country.”

Life’s Wonders

As I age, I am increasingly fascinated by the created Universe in front of us every moment. To me, Creation offers inexhaustible evidence about the enormity and goodness of our Creator.

It’s true that Creation’s evidence does not convince some folks who are committed to denial, folks to whom Faith is merely self-delusion. But to many of us, the messages of the Universe assure us of the majesty and o’erwheling power of God.

Indeed, the majesty of our Creator is revealed to us every instant as we look at the created Universe and realize that Creation is not an accident - nor are we. Our Faith tells us that this Universe is God’s handiwork … and we, too, are revelations of God’s Divine choosing.

To many of us, Creation is a truly wondrous Mystery which is enlivened by our Faith. Our Faith underscores the point and validity of Mystery in our lives, since it is within the Mystery of this created Universe that we live and breathe and have our being.

Our Faith reveals that our lives are gifts from God; we are surely not our own creators. We have the God-given gift of soul, which is the source of our earthly life and the gift of life-after-now.

We also have the gifts of thinking and choosing. Accordingly, we are wise to express our gratitude to our Creator rather than to snub His largesse and congratulate ourselves. We are wise to honor and worship our Creator, who grants us these gifts through no merit of our own.

Given the evidence of Creation, it is ever-clearer to me (and, I hope, to you) that we are foolish to disregard God’s claim to our gratitude. We are foolish to withhold our humble acquiescence to His commands and expectations.

So, Creation speaks to the fact of God, our Creator, and to our universal call to honor that fact. Furthermore, Creation’s abundant evidence validates Faith’s value in every sphere of human affairs … in family and politics and education; you name it.

What Evidence ?

For clarity’s sake, here is some of Creation’s evidence.

The European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope just mapped an astonishing 3.4 billion galaxies (each with billions of stars). It is an extraordinarily detailed model of the Universe, a changing Universe in constant motion.

Here is another example: An enormous black hole sits at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. But it is miniscule when we realize that a far-distant black hole in a galaxy five billion light-years away is the most massive measured (so far). It is more than 10,000 times as massive as the black hole at the center of our galaxy, and is about 36 billion times the mass of our sun.

With such overwhelming evidence about the infinite nature of the Universe, it is (at best) rash to say that all this is an “accident” or that our Creator does not exist or that the Universe created itself from nothing. Yet some people are unmoved by these realities.

I look upon all this evidence in Creation and realize that, as my Christian Faith reveals, God chose you and me in His agenda. That is a humbling realization. The Christian message of Creation is testament to the fact that, in God’s Mind, you and I really do matter. You and I are eternally beloved by our Creator. We are God’s creatures. We are not enemies. Hatred has no place in our lives.

That’s one message which Creation sends me each day. It is a message I accept with aging gratitude, I happily admit.

Where This Leaves Us

What’s the point?

The point is that the Universe and the Faith it inspires have countless practical consequences for us all. Even the founding of our country was influenced by God’s Divine Will.

How so? Consider these facts:

America shall soon observe the 250th anniversary of our founding (our semiquincentennial). Our Founders clearly asserted God’s role in our lives and proclaimed God as the origin of government.

Our Declaration of Independence is based on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.” Our Founders declared “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

At the risk of their lives, our Founders declared that we humans have been gifted by our Creator with numerous rights. The government does not possess the power to initiate these rights, nor can Government destroy them.

They further declared that “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Clearly, and wisely, the Founders also accepted the necessity of limits to what government may do and/or allow, just as God has revealed to us the limits of decency and civility and the necessity of loving ourselves and one another in due and proper manner.

Dangers In Denial

Unfortunately, too many citizens today militantly deny the Founders’ belief that God - not government nor any group - is in charge of human affairs. Too many people deny the dignity of each person and the centrality of Virtue over vanity in personal and community life.

Many citizens today reject God’s existence and, thereby, reject Christian Revelation and Tradition which announce God’s terms (i.e., the Commandments and Virtues, for starters) about how we should live and treat one another.

Thise in denial would be wise to heed the advice of Paul who says we should “get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger and slander, along with every form of malice.” We should, he adds, “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ forgives you.”

Pros And Cons

Finally, aging has again reassured me that, of the various Faith traditions seeking attention, the most effective and humane is the Christian worldview.

Critics of Christian Faith are plentiful. Nevertheless, people of good will are surely intelligent enough to recognize differences between (1) the Ideals of the Christian system, and (2) the human foibles of its errant practitioners (lay and clerical) who do not faithfully follow these Christian Ideals.

The Christian Faith centers around two major factors: (1) the life and parables of Christ, His example of fidelity to God’s Will and His heritage of kindness to others; and, (2) the Virtues which we are asked to freely practice, in step with Christ’s life.

This second step - our practice of Virtue in our lives - depends on taking personal responsibility for our behavior toward ourselves and one another, inspired by the example of Christ, aiming at the specifics of Charity, i.e., Love of God, Neighbor and Self in right and proper order.

Therefore, humanity’s problems (individual and national) are not the result of Christian life or the ideals of Virtue, as some dour critics claim. The real issue is our self-righteous capitulation to human weakness and fragile egos. The Christian Faith insists that we need God at the center of our lives and the example of Christ as our model and inspiration to Virtue.

Finally . . .

The evidence is there. Our Faith persuades us that God’s majesty is plainly visible in the Heavens. As noted, some people will reject the Truths of Creation and Revelation and will disdain the Virtues. But, happily, our Faith reminds us that God is ever-mindful of us and has crowned us with glory and honor, despite the doubts and the suffering which mark many lives, as Christ also experienced.

Our Faith also reminds us that we have been made to proclaim, by word and example, how majestic is the name of the Lord!

So, as my years nudge me along, I pray even more hopefully that Faith may enliven our minds and our actions as we strive for peace and civility in our lives.

May it be so. May it be ever so.