The promise of heaven is our eternal hope.

I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken. —Psalm 37:25

The former president of Columbia Bible College in South Carolina, J. Robertson McQuilkin, pointed out that God has a wise purpose in letting us grow old and weak:

“I think God has planned the strength and beauty of youth to be physical. But the strength and beauty of age is spiritual. We gradually lose the strength and beauty that is temporary so we’ll be sure to concentrate on the strength and beauty which is forever. And so we’ll be eager to leave the temporary, deteriorating part of us and be truly homesick for our eternal home. If we stayed young and strong and beautiful, we might never want to leave.”

When we are young, happily occupied with all our relationships and activities, we may not long for our celestial Home. But as time passes, we may find ourselves without family and friends, afflicted with dim vision and hearing difficulties, no longer able to relish food, or troubled by sleeplessness.

Here’s the advice I give myself: Be grateful that, as the apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 6:17, “God . . . gives us richly all things to enjoy” in life’s summer and autumn. And rejoice too that with the onset of life’s winter we can anticipate that we’ll soon be living in the land of eternal spring. —Vernon Grounds

There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way,
To prepare us a dwelling-place there.