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It seems to me everybody is obsessed. with staying young these days. Apparently, this is nothing new but boy, is it all the rage today. In order to stay young and look young, what should you do? Some have a special diet, some exercise, some do both. All sound pretty sensible to me, I do actually believe we should show good stewardship of the body God has given us, but for some that’s only the beginning. Some people use all sorts of tricks to make themselves look younger. People use all sorts of filters these days to make themselves look younger or more attractive on the photographs they post on social media. Some go so far as to have plastic surgery. One of the speakers at a podcasting conference I attended recently suggested that older people should dye their hair and wear makeup when podcasting. I remember when gray hair used to be a sign of wisdom. I've not much of it left now anyway so it not really an option for me these days. It seems to me people are just fighting nature. You’re not going to turn the clock back, so wouldn’t it make more sense if we gave some time and energy to thinking about? How to grow old gracefully?  

Maybe we should think about how to grow spiritually before we die, because that we know is going to happen and as much as we fight it, we’re not going to go back to being young again. So, what I would like for us to do today is to consider what the Bible says about growing old and growing old gracefully. Maybe some of you listening to me today think this doesn’t apply to me.  I’m not so sure it if it does today, but it will, soon enough. Therefore, we all need to be interested in this.

There is a passage of scripture that I think gives us some insight and how to grow old, gracefully, and that is the section covered by the first 11 verses of Genesis chapter 25. This is an interesting little passage of Scripture. It’s short but it makes some helpful points. It begins in verse 1 where it tells us 

“Abraham again took a wife. And her name was Keturah”. 

(Genesis 25: 1)

I want to stop here and just talk about the fact that Abraham made a decision to take another wife. This is interesting at this point we all know Sarah his first wife was now dead. She’s dead and buried at this point in his life. So, he’s decided to take another wife, later in life. What I want to point out is that Abraham is no spring chicken. Abraham at this point is a very old man. As a matter of fact, chapter 24 described him as being very old and well advanced in years.  The Bible makes an issue out of this way before we even get to the later passage we’re looking at today. Years before this the Genesis narrative stresses the fact that Abraham is a very old man andwe see he takes another wife again. His wife’s been dead for several years, so why at this old age, is he getting married again?  Nobody would fault him if the issue was, he wanted some companionship. I don't think we would fault him for that. 

So, what’s going on? Why does the suggest was the reason he decided to get married again? Well, look back at chapter 17 verse 4. This is Lord is speaking here and he says.

As for me, behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of, “many nations”.

(Genesis 17: 4)

Did you see that? How many nations? Many. Many nations. If you only have one son. It’s gonna be a little tough to have. descendants making up. Many nations.  I would like to suggest that in his old age, Abraham got married again in order to fulfil the will of God. It was the will of God that he had many nations come out of him. And that’s what happened when he married this lady. We shall see who they are in the next episode.