Fruitfulness

The first thing to know about people who shun retirement to work past age 80 is that they are probably busier, and possibly cooler, than you.

One said an interview would have to wait because he was traveling to France for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Another said he would be free after hitting a research deadline and organizing his Harvard Business School class’s 65th reunion. A third, available on shorter notice, emailed a physical description before meeting: “In the spirit of YOLO, I have blue hair and tattoos.”

Growing numbers of 80-somethings are deciding that if days are finite, they are better spent on the job than in retirement. Harrison Ford, 80, released his latest Indiana Jones movie, Jane Goodall, 89, is still protecting chimps, Smokey Robinson, 83, is still touring.

Roughly 650,000 Americans over 80 were working last year, that’s about 18% more than a decade earlier. Some people have been pressed back into duty by inflation and stock-market volatility. Many cite a simpler reason to keep working—they just want to. These workers joke about getting bored on the golf course or being pushed out of the house by a spouse who won’t tolerate idleness. Beneath the wisecracks is a sense of purpose that refuses to fade. They just can’t quit their careers.

Possible Preaching Angles:

As a positive illustration this shows that retirement can still be a fruitful time of life. As a negative illustration this could show how people’s identities and worth are still wrapped up in work.

Forty years ago, Steve Bell began building cabinets in his garage. Those humble beginnings have grown over the decades into Bellmont Cabinet Co., an award-winning manufacturing company specializing in the minimalist “frameless” cabinet, of which Steve was one of the first pioneers.

But Steve has pioneered more than just cabinetry – he is redefining the workplace and what it means to be a working Christian. “Growing up, there was this sense that if you’re really called to faith, then you're going to go into ‘the real Christian work’ of full-time Christian service. Everything else was basically a compromise,” recalls Steve, whose parents were disappointed that he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps into pastoral ministry.

One day in college, he was reading RG LeTourneau's Mover of Men and Mountains. LeTourneau experienced success in his business, so he asked his pastor, “Do you think I should sell my business and become a missionary?” The pastor said, “Bob, God needs businessmen as much as he needs pastors and teachers and missionaries.”

LeTourneau went on to become one of the great industrialists of the World War II era. Steve also realized that his desires for the business and manufacturing sector were a conviction from the Lord.

Steve said: “I think we've got generations of people growing up in the church who don't understand the importance of their work … God doesn't just love the cabinet maker; he loves good cabinets too. He actually loves the work that we do. I’ve got over 300 employees here that go out every day to make something that’s beautiful. And God loves beauty.”

Steve says, “This 200,000-square-foot facility with these 300 employees—this is my ministry … We want everybody that touches Bellmont to see Christ reflected in the way we do our business.”

Old Testament scholar Peter Craigie explored the Bible’s view on the brevity of human life. At one point in his career, Craigie wrote, “Life is extremely short, and if its meaning is to be found, it must be found in the purpose of God, the giver of all life.” He claimed that recognizing the transitory nature of our lives is “a starting point in achieving the sanity of a pilgrim in an otherwise mad world.”

Craigie wrote those words in 1983, in the first of three planned volumes on the Psalms in a prestigious scholarly commentary series. Two years later he died in a car accident, leaving his commentary incomplete. He was 47 years old. Craigie’s life was taken before he and his loved ones expected, before he could accomplish his good and worthy goals. Yet in his short life he bore witness to the breathtaking horizon of eternity. He bore witness to how embracing our mortal limits goes hand-in-hand with offering our mortal bodies to the Lord of life.

Every single person has an intimate relationship with time. The Oxford English Dictionary informs us that the word “time” is the most commonly used noun. “Year” is third and “day” and “week” come in in the top-20.

Researchers have found that the average person sleeps, or attempts to sleep, about nine hours a day. If the person lives to 80, he or she will sleep for 30 years. People who die at 80 will also have lived 700,000 hours, with 90,000 of those hours on the job.

What are we doing when we aren’t sleeping or working? In the US, the second-largest use of our time is … television. According to Nielsen, as recently as 2018, we spent four hours a day watching it. That’s broadcast television in real time. We’re not talking time-shifting DVR or YouTube, just plain TV. And nearly a quarter of that time is commercials. Multiply the numbers out over a lifetime, and you’re likely to spend well over two years of your life just watching commercials. TV isn’t even a majority of the media we consume. According to the same Nielsen study we spend 11 hours a day consuming media, which includes reading, listening, and watching.

The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.

Since 2003, Matthiasson Wines has been producing high-quality wines in the Napa region. In a recent newsletter, the Matthiasson's explained how they prune their vineyards:

Why do we prune? Because if the vine is not pruned it reverts very quickly to its wild nature, climbing everywhere with its long, sinewy trunk and tiny, scraggly bunches of uneven grapes. Every year we need to assess the growth of the vines, and decide whether to prune them back harder, or to let them grow a bit bigger, or return them to the same size and shape they were the year before.

Part of the pleasure of pruning is that it is pure craftsmanship, like woodworking or ceramics, a blending of form and vision, assessing the vine’s growth and adjusting the pruning cuts to its individual differences. It’s also a tactile relationship with nature, the living vines that could easily grow wild guided by our hands to line up in vineyard rows ready to bear another crop of wine grapes for our pleasure and nourishment.

If we prune correctly the vine will be balanced. That means it will grow just enough. If it grows too much, the resulting wines will be thin and simple. If it grows too little, the wine will be bitter and hard. The right amount of growth — what we call “balanced growth” — results in balanced wines that are delicious and show the terroir (environmental factors).

Maria Stenvinkel, a corporate consultant from Sweden, asked 65 people from around the world, “What’s your greatest fear in life?”

As you might expect, people mentioned the fear of “dying alone” or of “losing my job.” But of these 65 people, at least 14 (more than 1 in every 5) expressed a different fear: Living a life without purpose or meaning.

Listen to their own words:

My biggest fear is never taking a risk in an effort to find my true calling. – Anthony, New York City

My greatest fear is to go through life living small but not realizing it until it’s too late. – Rebekka, Stuttgart, Germany

My greatest fear would be missing out on my purpose here on earth. … I know I have a purpose that I am not yet serving. – Danielle, Sacramento

To go through life without leaving a positive mark. – Luciana, Sintra, Portugal

My greatest fear is regretting all that I didn’t do, as I lay in my hospital bed as an elderly man. – Ralph, North Brunswick

Caelie Wilkes was proud of her little succulent plant. But just when she was ready to take the next step in caring for it, she realized her efforts were all for naught. Wilkes said, “I was so proud of this plant. It was full, beautiful coloring, just an overall perfect plant … I had a watering plan for it, if someone else tried to water my succulent I would get so defensive because I just wanted to keep good care of it. I absolutely loved my succulent.”

When Wilkes decided it was ready to be transplanted into a larger vase, she was shocked to find that the plant was plastic. “I put so much love into this plant! I washed its leaves. Tried my hardest to keep it looking it’s best, and it’s completely plastic! How did I not know this? I pull it from the container it’s sitting on ... Styrofoam with sand glued to the top!”

Apparently, the plant’s inability to soak up water never clued in Wilkes about the nature of her plant, because real succulents don’t require much water. She’s since replaced the plant with several real succulents, purchased at a local home improvement chain store.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Outward signs of success are not always accurate indicators of health. What is inside a person may not match the appearance.

The 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard told the following parable:

There once was a lily who lived a happy life beside a rippling brook. This beautiful little flower, in its simple surroundings, was content and carefree. Until one day. Until the day when the bird showed up. Now this feathered visitor was a showoff. A braggart and teller of tales. It would swoop in and fill the lily’s head full of stories of better places and far more beautiful flowers. Each story was crafted to convey the message that, in comparison to other flowers, and other places, this poor lily was a nobody. A failed lily. Captive to simplicity. Embarrassingly inadequate.

Following each visit from the bird, the lily fretted more. It couldn’t sleep. It no longer woke up happy. It felt incapacitated by not-enough-ness. The beautiful little flower, once content, now realized, in comparison with others out there in the wide world, it was ugly, deficient, incarcerated in its familiar surroundings.

But the bird was there to help. The bird had the answer. So together they formulated a plan.

Early one morning, the bird landed beside the lily and began pecking away at the soil around its roots. Now liberated, the lily was placed under the wings of the bird and away they flew to the better place. In that better place, where lilies were more beautiful, where life was fuller, the flower told itself it would truly be a lily worthy of the name.

But, alas, they never made it. High in the heavens, rootless and finally free of its former constraints, the lily withered. And the lily died.

Kirk Cousins, the quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, has a sculpture outside his house with an odd purpose: it’s intended to remind him that he’s going to die. Well, sort of.

Planning to live to 90, the quarterback has a jar of 720 stones (one for each month he intends to live) at his home. Each month, he takes a stone out of the jar and carries it with him. He told ESPN’s Tory Zawacki Roy that “every month [he’s] going to take out a stone, put it in [his] pocket, and think: ‘Once this month is over, this is gone. You can’t get it back, it’s gone for good.’”

It’s only a little morbid until you remember that, as Cousins takes out the stones, he has a visual reminder—right outside his front door, no less—that his time on Earth is getting shorter and shorter. That may sound morbid at first, but it’s also biblical. The idea actually came to Cousins from a Bible teacher, in response to Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” This verse, Cousins says, is “about the importance of leaving a mark and making a deposit in people’s lives in a way that matters. In other words, you have an understanding that life is coming to an end someday, and that we only have so many days. There’s wisdom in that.”

Richard Halverson, former pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland and also the former chaplain of the United States Senate used the following benediction at the end of each service/message for many years in his ministry. It reflects his deep conviction that his church was not only where the congregation met on Sundays, but at each place where they lived and worked through the week.

A Benediction Wherever you go, God is sending you. Wherever you are, God has put you there. God has a purpose in your being right where you are. Christ, who indwells you by the power of his Spirit, wants to do something in and through you. Believe this and go in his grace, his love, his power. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen

Leadership coach Karen Miller tells the following story about how she and her husband needed to identify and develop new leaders for a new church plant:

One Sunday morning Irene, a church plant leader in her seventies, set up the Communion table. I noticed that she then went around to make sure everything else was in order—and people did whatever she asked them to do. Afterward I asked her, "Irene, have you ever considered that you have leadership gifts?"

"Absolutely not!" she said. "I am just an ordinary woman, housewife, and mother. I'm not leading; I'm just serving."

Some months later, our young church received a visit from a Rwandan church leader. He told the church how he dreamed of starting an orphanage and school for children whose parents had been slaughtered in the genocide. We decided we had to help. Could we hold a banquet to raise funds? Irene agreed to help put on the banquet.

When she visited a possible caterer, she somehow convinced the caterer to donate most of the food. Irene talked with a banquet hall, and they gave her a deep discount. So did the tech people. No one could tell Irene no. On the banquet night, over 200 people came, and enough money was raised to build the school and its first dormitory.

I teased her afterward: "Irene, that was amazing! Maybe you are a leader?" She laughed, for she finally had to acknowledge the truth. Each May, Irene led the banquet again. Now we could see photos of kids who had lived on the streets and never brushed their teeth flashing broad, white smiles. Boys who had been malnourished, their arms and legs painfully thin, now ran and jumped across the courtyard on strong legs. Girls who'd come dressed in rags showed off their neat school uniforms and barrettes.

After Irene went to be with the Lord, Sonrise Orphanage named a dorm after her did I find out that the banquet she'd led had singlehandedly covered one third of the school's operating costs.

Possible Preaching Angles: Leaders; Leadership; Leadership development—Why does leader training matter so much—especially when we're busy with a thousand other things? Because for any change to happen, there needs to be a leader. And for any God-honoring change to happen, there needs to be a God-honoring leader like Irene.

Claude Alexander, bishop of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, urges Christians from all walks of life to step up into bold leadership. Here's his take on bold leadership:

There are questions that beg to be answered. There are dilemmas to be overcome. There are gaps to be filled, and the challenge is for you to fill them. That is the essence of the high call of spiritual leadership. There is a purpose for your being here. You are meant to answer something, solve something, provide something, lead something, discover something, compose something, write something, say something, translate something, interpret something, sing something, create something, teach something, preach something, bear something, overcome something, and in doing so, you improve the lives of others under the power of God, for the glory of God.

American essayist, historian, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote: "It is not enough to be industrious. So are the ants." The British science magazine New Scientist put out an issue on the psychology and future of work. One of the articles, "I Work Therefore I Am," cited Brent Rosso, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Management at Montana State University. He penned six unique attributes that help people find meaning in their jobs. Rosso mined hundreds of academic surveys to come up with the list. He believes almost any job can have at least one of the attributes. (Note: attributes copied verbatim because of their brevity)

Authenticity Going to work makes you feel you are accessing your "true self"—maybe that you are following a calling or can be yourself.

Agency You are able to make significant decisions and feel as if you "make a difference." This taps into our desire to believe that we have free will.

Self-Worth Your job makes you feel valuable; you are able to see milestones of achievement, no matter how small.

Purpose You see your work as moving you closer to a strongly held goal. The downside is that you are more likely to sacrifice pay and personal time too.

Belonging It's not what you do, it's who you do it with. You belong to a special group of colleagues, even if your job seems mundane or poorly rewarded.

Transcendence Your job is about sacrifice for a greater cause. Your meaning comes from following this, or perhaps a truly inspirational boss.

Possible Preaching Angles: This would make a fascinating illustration for a sermon on faith and work. It poses the following questions: What drives or motivates you as a worker? What should drive you as a follower of Christ?

Science writer Hope Jahren shares an interesting fact about plants, especially how a tiny seed starts to put down roots—the most essential thing for a plant's survival. She writes,

No risk is more terrifying than that taken by the first root. A lucky root will eventually find water, but its first job is to anchor … Once the first root is extended, the plant will never again enjoy any hope of relocating to a place less cold, less dry, less dangerous. Indeed, it will face frost, drought, and greedy jaws without any possibility of flight.

She calls taking root a big "gamble," but if the seed takes root it can go down twelve, thirty, forty meters. The results are powerful. The tree's roots can "swell and split bedrock, and move gallons of water daily for years, much more efficiently than any pump yet invented by man." If the root takes root, then the plant becomes all but indestructible: "Tear apart everything aboveground—everything—and most plants can still grow rebelliously back from just one intact root. More than once. More than twice."

Possible Preaching Angles: In the same way, every Christian needs to put down his or her roots into the soil of Christ's love. Or we need to put down roots into the soil of relationships—with a church family or in a marriage.

In his best-selling book, Into Thin Air, John Krakauer tells the story of the ill-fated expedition to the summit of Mount Everest in 1996. In the book he mentions a member of the expedition named Yasuko Namba. Ms. Namba was a 46-year-old Japanese FedEx employee with a passion for climbing. She was an accomplished climber, having reached the summits of seven of the largest mountains on the planet. The only one left for her to conquer was Everest, the tallest in the world. She desperately wanted to get to the top of Everest as well.

This was her goal. So much so that Krakauer, who was also a member of the expedition, tells how "Yasuko was totally focused on the top. It was almost as if she was in a trance. She pushed extremely hard, jostling her way past everyone to the front of the line. She wanted to get to the top of Everest." Later that day, she made it. She accomplished her goal. She was the oldest person ever to make it to the highest point in the world.

Later that afternoon, however, Yasuko and a number of other climbers were caught in a terrible blizzard. And as the icy winds blew, Yasuko succumbed to the exhaustion of her climb and froze to death. Yasuko Namba died agonizingly close in time and location to where she had gained her greatest prize. This helps explain her tragic mistake. According to Krakauer, Yasuko's fatal flaw was that she adopted the wrong goal. Yasuko's goal had been to get to the top of the mountain. What she wanted the most was to stand at the top of the world, and all of Japan cheered her when she did. But this was the wrong goal, and a frequent and sometimes fatal mistake that climbers make. The goal of climbing should never be to get to the top of a summit. Successful climbers know that the goal is not to get to the top—it is to get back down to the bottom. The tragedy is that Yasuko accomplished her goal. Against incredible odds she made it to the top of the mountain. But as she poured out her energy to get to the top, she did not save enough strength to make it back down. Yasuko failed because she adopted the wrong goal.

In 1912, medical missionary Dr. William Leslie went to live and minister to tribal people in a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After 17 years he returned to the U.S. a discouraged man, believing he failed to make an impact for Christ. He died nine years after his return.

But in 2010 a team led by Eric Ramsey with Tom Cox World Ministries made a surprising discovery. They found a network of reproducing churches hidden like glittering diamonds in the dense jungle across the Kwilu River from Vanga, where Dr. Leslie was stationed.

Based on his previous research, Ramsey thought the Yansi in this remote area might have some exposure to the name of Jesus, but no real understanding of who he is. They were unprepared for their remarkable find. "When we got in there, we found a network of reproducing churches throughout the jungle," Ramsey reports. "Each village had its own gospel choir, although they wouldn't call it that," he notes. "They wrote their own songs and would have sing-offs from village to village." They found a church in each of the eight villages they visited scattered across 34 miles. They also found a 1000-seat stone "cathedral" that often got so crowded in the 1980s—with many walking miles to attend—that a church planting movement began in the surrounding villages.

Apparently, Dr. Leslie traveled throughout this remote region, teaching the Bible and promoting literacy. He also started the first organized educational system in these villages, Ramsey learned. For seventeen years, Ramsey fought tropical illnesses, charging buffaloes, armies of ants, and leopard-infested jungles to bring the gospel into a remote area. He died feeling like he had failed, but instead his faithfulness and courage left a powerful legacy of vital churches.

This illustration comes farm-fresh … all the way from Alaska. Tim Meyers is a farmer in Alaska, where the soil is rich, but frozen. Conventional wisdom says that farming where the ground never fully thaws is impossible—or at least impractical. But through savvy practices and hard work, Tim has become a permafrost farmer, growing organic food on his 17 acres of land, proving that even the most barren frozen land can be fruitful.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes in our lives, the ground feels frozen. But Tim's story reminds us that even in the most hostile conditions, life can find a way to break in. God is waiting to make even the permafrost fruitful. Will you let him?

In his book Sensing Jesus, Zack Eswine shares about a time of intense busyness and over-commitment. Many people tried to get his attention, but he refused to listen until he received a very special letter that finally changed his life. Zack writes:

[An older mentor named Bill told me], "Zack, your life is like a five-alarm fire. You are coming and going in so many directions. I worry about you."

One of my bosses echoed the same sentiment ten years later. "You are doing so many different things," she said. "We are afraid you are going to burn out. We want you around here for a long time, so pace yourself, okay?"

Her voice was soon joined by others'. Two colleagues invited me to lunch. Another called on the phone. "We are worried about you," they said.

Then I received a letter. It was the old-fashioned kind of letter with a stamp on the envelope. The words were written by hand with a pen. I opened it and heard my mom's voice as I read. She too must have heard the alarm. "Son," she wrote, "a tree has to have roots to provide shade.

Possible Preaching Angles: Busyness, Prayer, Rest, Spiritual Disciplines—Eswine says he learned the following lesson: "Shade is hard to give when roots remain shallow." In other words, when we don't have deep roots in God's love, when we don't abide in Christ, we won't be able to provide the kind of compassion and care that truly ministers to others.