RETIREES

                                                                            Retirees

Picture from Web

Looking back over his 30 years working as the Lord’s apostle, Paul wrote, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith’ (2 Tim. 4:7). Paul was, of course, talking about his life ending here. However, not to be overly dramatic, there are some similarities here to becoming a retiree. Years ago, while working in a railway repair shop, I saw a few retirements. The retiree would be presented with a gold watch, thanked for his lifetime dedication to the railway, and we would applaud. Then, before you knew it, ‘Did you hear that old Trashcan Bill has just died?’ No sooner were they a retiree, than it was their funeral. 

‘What funeral plans do you have for retirement?’ Some people can’t seem to adjust to major life changes.

One of my many reasons for leaving my railway job in Canada to move to Australia was an aversion to the ‘gold watch to pine box’ transition. Excuse the pun, but a dead-end job was not for me! God had graciously converted me just before I moved to Australia. Like every other new convert, I wanted to make sure everyone else got converted too! Australia looked like fertile soil. Of course, with a young family to feed, I also needed a job, hopefully, not a dead-end job. After much study to become a Presbyterian minister some 30 years ago, and after also becoming an Australian army chaplain, I subsequently became a retiree. Retiring from fulltime army, I then did another year working a couple of days a week for Army Reserve. So, my transition to retirement was smoother. The ADF did offer me some help to transition. I had been a writer/author for years, so ‘reinventing’ myself was easy. However, back to fighting the good fight, finishing the race and keeping the faith. Becoming a retiree can be alike running a marathon. You see the finish line approaching, but you’re spent. You use up whatever adrenalin and cortisol you have in reserve to get you over the finish line. Once crossed, you collapse in a heap – and hopefully recover! Of course, there’re are those who take all this in their stride. But, as an army psychologist asked me as I approached the ‘finish line’ exhausted, ‘Are you Superman? No? Then why don’t you let us help you?’ Isn’t that a lot of our trouble? As Christians we can be so busy giving of ourselves, that we neglect ourselves.

Paul adds, ‘I have kept the faith.’ He fought the good fight and ran the race, not for himself, but for Jesus. Isn’t that why we keep going as Christians? We do it in gratitude to our Lord and Saviour. There is a reward, but the subtilty is that it is not for the reward that we fight the fight and run the race. It’s as Job says, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him’ (Job 13:15a). That’s keeping the faith! During our working lives the mantra is ‘soldier on!’ It’s when we become a retiree, we begin to really feel all our aches and pains. We now have more time to discover how busted and broken we really are! Ah, but then there’s that reward for keeping the faith. As Paul said, ’Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on the Day, and not to me only, but also to all who have loved His appearing’ (2 Tim. 4:8). The ‘crown of righteousness’ is worth more than every Olympic gold medal together. The Olympic gold medallists earned their reward through arduous physical training and winning the race on the day. However, like our faith, our reward is a gift – paid for by Jesus, ‘the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God’ (Heb. 12:2).