Retirement or renewal

     

A couple of years ago, like many seasoned journalists, I was encouraged to retire earlier than I’d planned. I can’t remember exactly when it was because I’ve been so busy ever since.

      I’ve been blogging at Kim’s Neighborhood; teaching creative writing; handling freelance writing, editing, and broadcasting assignments; and mentoring my grandchildren. I’ve been leading poetry readings and reviewing new books.

      So you can imagine how delighted I was to see Christianity Today give several pages to the topic of retirement in their March issue.

      Managing editor Andy Olsen suggested that growing old was not what it used to be, and explained that their editors had felt the need to re-examine modern Western ideals of retirement in the light of biblical insight on vocation, rest, and church eldership.

      He said that the still-young experiment of retirement as vacation is not working out for millions who are approaching or are already well into their sixties. Too many men are putting down the TV remote and asking with complete sincerity, “What am I going to do?”

      Christianity Today points out that the world is undergoing a massive demographic shift. More than 70 million baby boomers will retire in the next 20 years in the United States alone. By 2035, Americans of retirement age will exceed the number of people under the age of 18 for the first time in US history. Globally, the number of people age 60 and over is projected to double to more than 2 billion by 2050.

      So the magazine asked whether there might be new ways of thinking about retirement for those who fear financial ruin (or rudderless boredom) at the end of their so-called working years. And what can be learned from the most firmly established Christian retirement communities?

      Jeff Haanen, who anchors the article, is executive director of the Denver Institute for Faith & Work. He asks where in the Bible we see evidence of retirement? Did Moses retire? Did Paul retire? Peter? John? Do military officers retire in the middle of a war?

      Haanen shares the observations of a wide-ranging group of retired and semi-retired men and women.

      Susan Cole,  a 56-year-old music educator who taught elementary students for more than two decades, says that her decision to continue working part-time as a piano teacher at a local music school was totally a God thing: “God was calling me to both care for my students and my family in this season. I was needed here. But I don’t ever see myself giving up teaching.”

      Haanen suggests that a new generation of boomers is opting less for civic heroism or overseas mission assignments and instead choosing a lifetime of humble service, in both paid and unpaid roles, right where they are.

      He quotes Dwight L. Moody of Chicago Bible Institute fame who once said, “Preparation for old age should not begin later than one’s teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.”

      Haanen says that although that’s true, a new generation of older Americans sees retirement as a contemporary social construct that affords them the opportunity to re-explore their God-given purpose for a new season of life. “Not all the questions about retirement,” he says, “have easy answers for the nearly 78 million baby boomers who are facing it.

      “But many older Christians across the developed world are embracing not a vacation mentality, world-changer ethos, or grudging burden of working later in life. They are simply being ever renewed and continue to serve God and neighbor as elders in their spheres of influence.”

      And in that Haanen observation you might recognize the voice of the Apostle Paul: “Do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day”(II Cor. 4:16, NIV).

      I’m grateful for that inward renewal, and to have left the office behind—whenever it was!