Last Sunday after church I went up on the platform to disassemble all my electronics. I use my phone to do the live Facebook event and I bring my computer to hook up to the church projector for the PowerPoint presentation. I took my phone off the tripod and noticed a message from the hospital about my appointment the next day, so accessed my voice mail and listened to a long list of things while I folded up cords and packed my computer.
Then I had a moment of panic. I could not find my phone! I started looking all around where I thought I might have set it down only to realize that I was still holding it in my hand and listening to the voice mail. Senior Moment? Medication foggy-brained moment? The beginning of something worse? Maybe even an “Aunt Irene” moment?
Everyone knows an “Aunt Irene.” I did. She was often defined as a ditz. She would drive from the suburbs into Pittsburgh to shop, take the bus home, and then call her husband to tell him their car was stolen. She did that with her kids once, left them in the department store. She painted the furnace in their basement the day before her daughter’s wedding reception because it looked “tacky.” The weather turned cold and they had to light the furnace for the reception only to drive the guests out coughing and teary eyed from the fumes. Yep, that was Aunt Irene.
Am I now becoming “Aunt Irene?” Probably not, but I am having to handle moments of forgetfulness, which seems to be a side effect of my medication. Bodies and minds change from all kinds of influences, and we need to learn to adjust to things we never expected.
Yet as I sit here contemplating, I am reminded that even if my mind should fail, that changes nothing with my LORD. My hope and my future are in His Hands, tucked away securely so that when I leave this life with all its challenges, I will have life abundant beyond measure.
When Jeremiah surveyed all the challenges his beloved people were facing with Babylonian captivity, God reminded him that the captivity had a limit, 70 years. Beyond that was promised welfare, not disaster, and a future and a hope. So, yes, body and/or minds may fail us here, but that does not negate our future or our hope!
“’For I know the plans I have for you’”—this is the Lord’s declaration—’plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’” [Jeremiah 29:11]
