Bill Beauchamp just retired as an executive from the telephone company. He accepted the chairmanship of the elders and spends many hours here. David Dageforde retired early from his medical practice and spends a good portion of his time on the mission field as well as heading up a national medical missions conference that we host here.
Al Burnett retired from Ford, and when we first moved into this building he volunteered 15-20 hours a week running our lights before he died a year ago. Helen Gutermuth, a great grandmother, is a favorite chaperone for Bible Bowlers and a regular decision counselor. Norm Risley and Fran Lawson are both widowed and both are 74. They got married here last year, and they met volunteering at the Outlook.
One of my favorite volunteer stories is that of Sam Rosenberg. Sam just turned 90 and plays trombone regularly in our orchestra. He's an excellent musician and is here every night for the Easter Pageant. The other day Sam laughed and said, "I must be a crazy old man. I'm 90 years old and I just bought a brand new trombone!" The doctor says he's as healthy as a horse and it may be due in part to the fact that he's played that trombone all his life and continues to exercise his lungs.
Paul advised Titus, "Teach the older men to be sound in endurance." Don't quit Christian service when you retire from your work. That's a time to re-channel your efforts. You may never be more valuable to the Kingdom of God than now.
The seniors listed Inflexibility as the fourth greatest temptation. Most younger people think this should be higher on the list, but our seniors rated it number four.
No generation in history has experienced as many dramatic changes as we. Think of the technology changes we've witnessed. Airplanes, televisions, computers, cell phones, the internet have all been invented in our generation. Those are all positive changes but they create a feeling of instability in our lives. Every generation experiences the winds of change, but we've experienced a hurricane of transformations.
Not all change that has taken place has been good. Some has been immoral (Internet pornography), some wasteful (remember the promise that the lottery would solve our educational problems?), some impractical (wearing your pants so low they fall off when you get too active!). So some resistance to change is understandable.
But the truth is, the older we get the more inclined we are to get in a rut of routine to the point that we instinctively resist change because it takes us out of our comfort zone. We want the same parking place, the same seat, the same songs, the same program, because we feel comfortable with them. So we become inflexible and we sometimes look silly.
Russ Summay says his grandfather was opposed to his parents getting an inside bathroom many years ago. He absolutely refused to use it so the family had to keep their outhouse until grandpa died. He would shake his head and insist that, "It's just not appropriate to do that sort of thing in the house!"