A Long and Rewarding Goodbying Hello

Father, I am growing older, my body failing in so many ways.  I need Your daily help to live a vibrant and faith-filled life.  Help me, Father.  What am I to do when the pain of the fall begins to creep into my very joints, it's no longer an abstract Eden tale, but a creeping insidiousness that gets into every crevice, every nook and cranny of my body.  Age makes the fall personal, gives it every increasing awfulness, I have begun to taste it in my mouth, feel its beginning pangs of death, and know my mind's failings, forgetfulness, and bewilderment.  Daily life has become an exercise in accommodation, planning easier routes, avoiding unnecessary resistance, finding a better way.  But Father there is another side of this story between You and me.  Life in the grip of the fall makes our relationship all the more personal, as my need for help increases so does Yours as my helper; “Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”  The aches and pains of the fall draw me closer and closer to You, like old hands to a warm fire, Your care assures me of a coming doing away of all pain and sorrow; “there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”  And there is a grandeur of life, of living that only aging through the fall can mature me for.  It is an awareness of life, like an awareness of the air that envelops me now, its moisture and warmth I am now slowed enough to feel, the forest and mountains, river and sky all are part of Your ongoing care for me, abundant living life ripe with eternity even in the throes of death.  I feel eternity…I feel eternal, more eternal than ever before, a longing and restfulness in the wait, a long and rewarding goodbying hello; “then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”