If the Lord grants me mercy, I can reasonably expect another ten years of honest labor. I know theologians who have taught longer than that, and so will I if I can. But that is in the Lord’s hands, and anything more than threescore and ten will be a pure gift (not that the threescore and ten aren’t).

When you’re a kid you can’t wait to grow up. Then you do grow up, and you realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. You have to do unpleasant things like take responsibility for yourself, and often for others. At some point you begin to gaze toward old age in the same way a mariner, spyglass to his eye, scrutinizes the beaches of some unexplored continent. You wonder what it’s going to be like. You worry that maybe you’ll be too feeble or witless to enjoy whatever compensations the passing years might bestow.

We’ll, I’ve landed on that shore. At the end of August I celebrated my sixtieth birthday. I no longer have to worry about old age. I only have to enjoy it—or endure it.

My birthday itself was unremarkable. Since it fell on a Sunday, I went to church. I even taught Sunday school. Granted, I did nap during the afternoon, but I’ve been doing that since I was twenty-something. Sixty hardly felt distinguishable from fifty-nine.

Something did change, though. I first noticed it when going to meet a student for breakfast on Tuesday morning. The parking lot at Perkins was full except for the far corners and a single space near the door. Blessing my good fortune, I pointed the Ford toward the premium spot. That’s when I noticed the sign that said, “Reserved for Seniors.” For a moment my brow puckered at the thought of turning around and driving toward the distant reaches of the lot. Then it occurred to me—I’m entitled to this space.

Indoors, the experience repeated itself. I scanned the breakfast menu for something that I’d enjoy eating. Then I noticed the back cover. It showed a “Senior’s Menu,” and sure enough, the thing I was looking for was right there.

By the time I left the restaurant, I had decided to own my newfound status. I am a senior. A sexagenarian. A geezer. A fossil. A codger. An elder. A greybeard (literally). To celebrate, I kept my turn signal blinking for a full two miles.

Old men are fond of their memories. I can recall the decade of the 50s. It seems like another world. I vividly remember that day in 1963 when President Kennedy was shot. My first political opinion was to favor Johnson over Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. If I pause for a moment, other memories come bubbling to the surface: the Beatles, the summer riots of 1967, the introduction of the Boeing 737, the Viet Nam conflict, the Six Day War, the Black Panthers, the SDS, Woodstock, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Chicago Seven, the 1968 Detroit Tigers, the first man on the moon, the Kent State shootings, the surrender of Biafra, the thawing of relations with Red China, Roe v. Wade, the Yom Kippur War, the Watergate scandal. All of that happened before I graduated from high school.

Old men also think of the future, partly because they have so little of it in front of them. You can no longer ponder what you would like to become when you grow up. Both short days and diminishing energy force you to make choices and then to live with the consequences.

If the Lord grants me mercy, I can reasonably expect another ten years of honest labor. I know theologians who have taught longer than that, and so will I if I can. But that is in the Lord’s hands, and anything more than threescore and ten will be a pure gift (not that the threescore and ten aren’t). During the next ten years, I hope to attain three ambitions.

First, I would like to become a really good teacher. I don’t think I’ve been a bad one, but I want to give my students more than I ever have. The good news is that I have more to give. I have been developing my theology since I became a believer in 1962, and (obviously) I know more now than ever. What is more, events of the past ten years have prodded me to restructure and reevaluate a good bit of what I teach. My goal is for my last decade to be my best.

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