By Sharon V. King−
How are you doing with your New Year’s Resolutions? Here’s one more to add to your list, and it’s one you can easily achieve: Resolve this year to age “grace-fully,” as in aging full of God’s grace. A new book from Anaiah Press can help you do just that—Aging Gracefully with the 23rd Psalm.
You may never have associated the 23rd Psalm with aging. Aging Gracefully with the 23rd Psalm creates an opportunity for you and me to shift our gaze from the media mania about aging and examine our 50+ years through a spiritual lens. The ancient beauty of this psalm’s verses has reached across the centuries to millions of people at all stages of life. If we look closely, each verse of Psalm 23 contains a theme that speaks directly to those of us in or approaching the later years of our lives.
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Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter of Aging Gracefully with the 23rd Psalm:
“Can we talk about Perspective? How does the powerful first verse of Psalm 23—“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want”—provide perspective for us as we age? If we follow the Shepherd, we can trust His guidance into our later years. We won’t want for anything because we believe our Shepherd can give us what Marcel Proust calls “new eyes” to see the landscapes of our lives from His perspective. What we perceive as lush, green feeding pastures may, from God’s perspective, be filled with sharp, dangerous rocks; or what may appear to us as risky territory may be exactly the route God wants us to take so He can meet our needs.”
As we age, we may have questions about:
- Choices that will shape our quality of life as we age
- Making fresh starts
- Resolving past conflicts
- Coping with social, personal, and physical changes
- Navigating through emotional transitions
- Processing loss and grief
- End-of-life planning
Believe it or not, you can find inspiration and guidance for all those issues and more in the verses of the 23rd Psalm. You can use Aging Gracefully with the 23rd Psalm as a personal devotional, or use the discussion questions at the end of each chapter for a group study. The book also gives you an opportunity to do your own journaling about each topic.
Aging Gracefully with the 23rd Psalm will be released by Anaiah Press January 27, 2015. Watch for it at www.anaiahpress.com and www.yearsfullofgrace.com.
© 2014 Sharon V. King, PhD