The Secret of Getting Younger

Herbert Silverwood was a Yorkshire-born-and-bred pub comedian, turned old style evangelist who used to conduct beach missions. Quite a character... One very hot summer, he had been preaching all week on Great Yarmouth beach and he thought he’d go for a dip to cool off. The thing is, he couldn’t swim a stroke - but he said to himself he’d just go in waist deep and everything would be fine.

Alas, he hadn’t noticed that the sand sloped quite steeply a few yards in to sea; he lost his footing and started to flail his arms, splashing around and yelling for help.

It just so happened that a life guard was on duty nearby, so he dashed into the water, pulled the old boy out, and pumped him dry. “I don’t know Mr. Silverwood” he said. “All week long I’ve been listening to you preaching about heaven and how you can’t wait to get there. The first opportunity you have to go, you’re desperate to put it off!”

Silverwood, with all the quick reflexes of a stand-up comedian, just smiled at the hero who had saved his life and said, “Listen to me young man, would you want to face the last judgement dressed in these swimming trunks?”

November is maybe the month of the year when we are most aware of our mortality; many churches hold bereavement services around All Saints’ Day. Then there is Remembrance of course, the honouring of lives tragically cut short by war.  

As leaves drop off the trees and the days turn darker and colder, nature itself seems to remind us of the inevitability of the winter of our lives.

Every November, I add a year to my age. Someone once joked “One of the many things no one tells you about ageing is that it’s such a nice change from being young.” But there are advantages to getting older. This month, I turn 53 and the only way to fit that many candles on the cake is to get a bigger one.

Billy Graham once said, “You're born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there's a loophole.”

I don’t think he was just talking about eternal life and the wonderful presence of Jesus, an illuminating glimpse of which we had at All Saints’ when Paul McWilliams came to speak last month. Paul told the remarkable story of how he came to faith after a serious accident from which he was not expected to survive and which resulted in his heart stopping several times. He told of his encounter with Jesus and of his extraordinary healing after the doctors had said he had no chance.

I think that Graham also meant that ageing, for Christians, is only what you see on the outside. On the inside, spiritually, we’re actually getting younger as grace slowly works Jesus’ character into ours - what the Bible calls “sanctification.”

This is surely what 2 Corinthians 4.16 means. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”

I think that’s something to make a splash about.