Psalms 71:17-24: a reflection

17God, you have taught me from my youth. Until now, I have declared your wondrous works. 18Yes, even when I am old and gray-haired, God, don’t forsake me, until I have declared your strength to the next generation, your might to everyone who is to come. 19God, your righteousness also reaches to the heavens. You have done great things. God, who is like you? 20You, who have shown us many and bitter troubles, you will let me live. You will bring us up again from the depths of the earth. 21Increase my honor and comfort me again. 22I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, my God. I sing praises to you with the lyre, Holy One of Israel. 23My lips shall shout for joy! My soul, which you have redeemed, sings praises to you! 24My tongue will also talk about your righteousness all day long, for they are disappointed, and they are confounded, who want to harm me.

The psalmist, now aging, looks back on a lifetime with God: O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. And then he prays a prayer for his later years: even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your strength to all those to come. His desire in old age is not merely comfort or rest, but to keep declaring God's faithfulness to the generation coming up behind him.

Notice the purpose he attaches to his later years. He does not view old age as a time simply to fade quietly, but as a time with a mission: to hand on the testimony of God's faithfulness to the next generation. He has known God from his youth; now, gray-haired, he wants to keep proclaiming what he has learned, to pass the faith forward before he goes. His prayer is not just keep me, but keep me until I have declared you to those who come after.

That is a beautiful purpose for the later stretches of life, and a challenge whatever our age. The faith we have received, the faithfulness of God we have witnessed over the years, is meant to be handed on, declared to the generation coming after us. Our accumulated experience of God is a treasure to pass forward, not to keep to ourselves or let die with us. However old you are, ask, with the psalmist, that God would keep you until you have declared his faithfulness to another generation. Make the passing on of the faith a purpose of your years.

Lord, the aging psalmist prayed that you would not forsake him until he had proclaimed your might to another generation. Give me that purpose, whatever my age: to hand on the testimony of your faithfulness to those coming after me, not to keep it to myself or let it die with me. Keep me until I have declared you to the next generation. Help me pass the faith forward, that they too may know you.