“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, And loving favour rather than silver and gold. The rich and poor meet together: The LORD is the maker of them all. A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: But the simple pass on, and are punished. By humility and the fear of the LORD Are riches, and honour, and life. Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward: He that doth keep his soul shall be far from them. Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it. The rich ruleth over the poor, And the borrower is servant to the lender.”
Proverbs 22:1-7 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/pro.22.1-7.KJV
Don’t Lose Heart
As we start getting older, our bodies begin to change.
Muscles might ache. Hair might gradually turn gray. Vision and hearing might eventually get less sharp. And we, or someone we love, might even struggle with significant or devastating health challenges.
The apostle Paul once offered some ageless wisdom to the believers in Corinth, Greece, which can still be helpful for us today:
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”
2 Corinthians 4:16 NIV
Paul knew what it was like to face hard things; he’d been beaten, shipwrecked, snake bitten, and imprisoned.
Earlier in the letter, he’d said, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9 NIV)
The ripple effects of sin’s existence in the world might frustrate us physically, but it ...