This morning's prayer is more personal than what I usually write, but it's really intended for all of us who getting older - and of course, that's all of us!
Through all my life, Lord, I've always been younger than the pope - until now! Just yesterday Leo turned 71 - while I'm in my 80th year...
I'm older than the pope himself!
In so many times and places now when I look around and survey the crowd: I'm the eldest in the conversation, at the table or in the room...
And I wonder, Lord: do I seem as old to them as they seem young to me?
Now, none of this comes as a gripe or complaint: I'm grateful and pleased to be 79 especially when I consider - as I do with increasing frequency - the impending and only alternative...
But because of all I've loved and learned and lived - I look forward, Lord: to all the beauty my eyes have not yet seen.. and all the music my ears have not yet heard... and all the wonders, blessings, glory and joy - more than mind and heart might imagine - that you have readied for me as one who has tried, wanted and desired to know you and love you and serve you - even if only in my own halting, stumbling, bumbling, too often weak and unfaithful ways...
You see, Lord, it's just that I didn't expect this time to come, well... so quickly...
so unexpectedly... so suddenly... so involuntarily... so frankly... so appreciably... so plainly... so unavoidably... so perceptibly... so physically... so publicly... so candidly... so mentally... so personally... so openly... so spiritually... so actually... so naturally... so bluntly... so really... so undeniably and beautifully...
But the time has come, Lord, this time when more and more - it's you and me... when day by day and night by night - it's you and me... when with deeper faith and increasing trust I know - it's you and me... when with growing clarity and greater comfort I understand - it's you and me... when I've come to see, and I pray to accept, and I do believe that in the end, as in the beginning and as it always shall be: Lord, it's you and me...
And that, Lord, brings me peace...
So, this is a day that you've made, Lord - a day filled with promise, mercy and grace in the 80th year of my life. I pray for many more years of days to spend with you and with those I love: years of days before the day when you call me home to rest in your heart, where days are no longer counted, time no longer measured and it's always you and me, Lord... always you and me...
Amen.
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