We invite you to take a peek inside our weekly Light for the Way devotional series. Today Pastor Chris Wheatley concludes Active Aging Week with a sermon on Spiritual Wellness Day.
On aging, choosing and freedom
“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” -Romans 6:15-18
And so, we reach the end of Active Aging Week. Over the past six days, you have been invited to consider this stage of your life in a new way, as the stage with potentially your highest possible well-being. As truly “golden years” to be embraced.
As part of that, you have been invited to actively engage in all aspects of your life. You’ve been called upon to examine your social relationships. To consider your gifts and talents, and maybe even volunteer with them. To engage in brain exercise through crafts and activities. To engage in physical activities such as walking and stretching. Even to give significant time and energy to holistic life review.
But let’s be clear about something. The choice that is being presented to you in all of this is whether to age actively, with clear goals, a vision of wholeness, and the science of wellness at the ready, or to age passively, with the same strategies you used for earlier stages of life. “Not aging” is not one of your options. Every day, we each get older. And we can welcome that as the reward for living another day, and take into account the implications and opportunities of that accumulated time, or we can ignore it, and pretend that it didn’t happen. But that doesn’t mean it really didn’t.
Read more on our Active Aging Week website.
Rev. Chris Wheatley serves PHS as Senior Director of Pastoral Care Services. He is an ordained Lutheran pastor and has served in hospice, eldercare, hospital, HIV/AIDS and congregational settings. He and his wife Nicole are perpetually outnumbered by cats and Dobermans.
Find more in the Light for the Way series:
Get to know us: a Christian ministry
Introducing Light for the Way, a new devotional series
