Preaching of the Old & Grayheaded

Now also when I am old and gray­headed, O god, for­sake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this gen­er­a­tion, and thy power to every one that is to come. Psalm 71:18, KJV

By no means can I speak here from expe­ri­ence. As I’m writ­ing this, I’m twenty-four years old, and as far as I can tell, there is not yet a gray hair on my head. Frankly, I’m hop­ing that my hair just falls out rather than tak­ing the time to change color first, but that’s beside the point.

How­ever, here we have the prayer of an uniden­ti­fied man, pos­si­bly David, in antic­i­pa­tion of grow­ing old, as verse 9 and our verse 18 indicate.

Notice what he looks for­ward to in that old age. He is not pray­ing for a peace­ful time of retire­ment so that he may golf with his fel­low Israelites down at the Jerusalem Coun­try Club, nor does he ask for abun­dant travel expenses to see the world before dies.

In fact, he prays for the com­plete oppo­site. He asks the Lord not to over­look him in his old age when there’s work to be done, and what work it is! He asks that he’ll be able to tell the next gen­er­a­tion (and even the next there­after!) of the Lord’s strength, most likely as Redeemer of His people.

As any preacher can tell you, that is no small task. It’s one thing for an evan­ge­list to travel from church to church, preach­ing the gospel to the saved. It’s some­thing else entirely to tell the redemp­tion story to gen­er­a­tions who have not heard it, to those who are igno­rant of the Lord’s strength in redeeming.

That is by no means an easy task. Yet it is the one this man asks to be able to con­tinue in even when he’s elderly. Sure he might miss out on many rounds of golf with Buffy & Biff and he may never win at BINGO. Indeed, he might come to be ridiculed and slan­dered by the next gen­er­a­tion for his stand in the truth. He may even be mar­tyred as so many oth­ers who would preach that redemp­tion is of the Lord.

Yet still he prays. Lord, let me reach them. Use me, despite my age, to show your strength and to mag­nify your glory to the young peo­ple of this world.

When the time comes, I hope that is my atti­tude. Today it is my prayer, though I’m of course sub­sti­tut­ing “bald” for “grayheaded.”

The har­vest is only becom­ing more plen­ti­ful. In thirty to forty years, this world is going to need all the old and gray­headed preach­ers it can. I encour­age you if you haven’t already, incor­po­rate this psalmic sup­pli­ca­tion into your prayers. See you in the fields.