Nearing Home by Billy Graham (best book club books for discussion txt) 📗

my business with as little advance planning as I gave to my retirement years,” he added, “I’d have gone bankrupt.” “I thought I was prepared for my senior years,” a woman wrote me. “As a single professional woman, I’d devoted a great deal of attention to being certain I’d be financially secure. But now I’m realizing I’m totally unprepared for the emotional and spiritual challenges I’m facing. Financial security isn’t the whole story, I’ve discovered—not at all.”

RETIREMENT AND THE BIBLE

Work is a part of God’s plan for our lives. Work is not something we do just to put food on the table; it is one of the major ways God has given us to bring glory to Him. The writer of Ecclesiastes declared, “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God” (2:24). Paul said, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

For most of His life, Jesus worked with His hands. “Isn’t this the carpenter?” some of His enemies sneered, assuming (incorrectly) that an ordinary occupation such as carpentry surely disqualified Him from being the Messiah (Mark 6:3). The apostle Paul likewise worked with his hands, often earning his living as a tentmaker during his travels (Acts 18:3). In God’s eyes every legitimate work has dignity and importance, which means we should do our work with pride and diligence and integrity.

But our work was never meant to become the center of our lives. That place belongs only to God, and when we allow our work to dominate and control us, then it has become an idol to us—and that is wrong. Someone who brags about working seventy or eighty hours (or more) a week probably thinks he is the master of his job—but in reality he has become its slave. In addition, because his life is so wrapped up in work, his identity or sense of self-worth—that is, his understanding of his value or significance as a person—often comes to depend on his ability to work. Unfortunately our materialistic society only reinforces this view. But God says you are greater than your work, and your work is only a part of His plan for you.

Does this mean it is wrong in God’s eyes to stop working and retire?

It’s true that the word retirement—especially as we use it today—isn’t found in the Bible. For the most part people in the ancient world worked as long as they were physically able. They had to because there were no social security plans or retirement savings schemes to help them in their latter years. In addition, many people worked for themselves as farmers or fishermen or artisans, and they had to keep working as long as possible in order to survive (as is still true in many parts of the world). If they were unable to work, they usually depended on their families to care for them. Sometimes that wasn’t possible, however, which is why the Bible commands us to have special concern for those who lack family support—widows, orphans, and people with disabilities. The psalmist wrote,

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless;

maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.

Rescue the weak and needy. (Psalm 82:3–4)

The only explicit reference to retirement in the Bible concerns the members of the tribe of Levi, who were given the responsibility of assisting the priests in the Tabernacle (or later, in the Temple), the center of Israel’s worship of God. This included the maintenance of the building and the care of the sacred objects used in worship. Their responsibilities began at the age of twenty-five, but the Bible says, “At the age of fifty, they must retire from their regular service and work no longer” (Numbers 8:25). The reason isn’t given, but presumably it was to minimize the danger (through physical weakness) of accidentally dropping something used in worship and thus damaging it or making it ceremonially unclean. It may also have been to give a new generation of Levites the opportunity to assume their responsibilities.

Today we live in a much different world, and the idea of retiring from our work and enjoying our latter years is very much a part of our thinking. Older people are often pressured into retirement in order to give employment opportunities to the young. There isn’t anything wrong with retiring, and those years can be some of the best of our lives if we can see them as a gift from God. God rested on the seventh day after He had finished His work of creating the universe, and we shouldn’t feel guilty if He gives us the opportunity to rest once our work is done.

RETIREMENT FOR ME

The decision to step aside from my life’s work of preaching was not an easy one for me. For years I had told people I would retire only when God decided to retire me—but what exactly did I mean by that? Slowly it dawned on me that I wasn’t sure how I would know if God wanted me to step aside, short of a major health crisis. Somewhere I had heard of a well-known preacher who persisted in his work long after he should have retired until one day someone had to take him by the elbow and gently lead him out of the pulpit because he wasn’t speaking coherently. I certainly didn’t want that to happen to me.

But as the years went by, I began to realize that I no longer had the physical stamina to maintain the schedule I had once kept. After much prayer and consultation with people whose wisdom I respected, I began to shorten the length (and number) of our citywide crusades, moving from two weeks to ten days, then to a week, then eventually to three days. I also began limiting other engagements as much as possible to preserve my