I Have Decided It Is My Age

You have an explanation and you use it for everything now.

Something does not work. You cannot find a thing. Somebody says a word you have not heard. And the same sentence comes up in you every time, and you say it out loud sometimes, lightly, as a joke.

It is my age.

And everybody accepts it, because it is a socially finished sentence. Nobody argues with it. The conversation moves on and everybody is comfortable.

Here is what has been happening underneath that, and it is the reason for this piece.

An explanation that covers everything explains nothing. And an explanation nobody ever argues with never gets tested, and an untested explanation grows, and now it covers things it has no business covering.

You have started using it for things that have nothing to do with years at all. A badly designed thing. A word nobody explained. A screen that changed without warning.

All of it goes into the same sentence, and the sentence is about you, and you have been signing your name to it several times a week for about three years.

As strong this day as I was in that day

There is a man of eighty-five making a claim about himself, and the claim is very specific.

As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in. (Joshua 14:11, King James Version)

As strong this day. And then he says what for. For war, both to go out and to come in.

He is not making a general boast about being young at heart. He is naming a particular task and saying he is equal to that particular task.

You are as strong this day for the thing in front of you, and no general claim about years has ever once been the same as a claim about a specific task. Joshua 14:11 says as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that down onto one real thing rather than into a slogan.

Notice what he asks for in the next verse. Give me this mountain. He asks for the hill country, which was the hardest piece of land on the list, with the most difficult people in it.

An eighty-five year old man asking for the hardest job available, on the grounds that his strength is what it was.

You have somebody in Scripture asking for the hardest piece at eighty-five, and no age anywhere in that account has ever once been offered as a reason to be given something easier. The Holy Spirit is the one who does not hand out lighter work on the basis of years, and it is written that he asked for the mountain rather than being assigned it.

And notice that nobody argues with him. Not Joshua, not the elders, not anybody. He gets the mountain.

The claim was tested by being acted on, which is the only way any claim about a person ever gets tested.

You were never going to find out by thinking about it, and no explanation about a person has ever once been settled anywhere except in the doing. The Spirit of God is the one who settles a question by letting somebody act, and Scripture has him given the hill country rather than a discussion about it.

What the explanation is covering

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not remove a sentence a woman has been saying for three years.

Take the last five times you used it and sort them honestly.

One of them was probably a real thing about years. Eyes, or a hand, or being tired in the afternoon in a way that did not happen at fifty. Those are real and they are not being denied here.

But two of them were a badly designed thing that a person of any age would have struggled with. One was a word nobody had explained. And one was something that had changed since the last time you looked, which is not a fact about you at all.

You are running one explanation over five different situations, and no single sentence has ever once been the true account of five separate things. The Spirit of God is the one who sorts what has been swept into one pile, and Joshua 14:11 puts the claim onto one specific task rather than over a whole life.

And here is the second half, which is why it matters. An explanation is not neutral. It decides what happens next.

If the reason is my age, there is nothing to be done and no point asking anybody anything. If the reason is that nobody explained a word, there is a question to ask. If the reason is that a thing changed, there is a thing to find out.

Three of those five had an answer available, and the explanation closed all of them at once.

That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a gap in you. Nobody ever told you that the sentence was doing that.

You have had three available answers closed by one sentence, and no explanation has ever once been harmless when it covers everything. The written word puts the strength onto a named job, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what their own explanation has been shutting.

Name three things

Now the small thing, and it is evidence rather than encouragement.

I am not going to tell you that age is irrelevant. It is not irrelevant and pretending otherwise would insult you.

Name out loud three things you have learned since you were fifty.

You are able to produce evidence about yourself, and three named things have never once been a smaller argument than one repeated sentence. Joshua 14:11 has a man producing a specific claim rather than a general one, and the Holy Spirit is the one present while a woman goes looking for her own evidence.

Three, out loud, on your own.

They do not have to be about screens. A route through a town that changed. A person's whole family and the names in order. A way of doing something in a kitchen that nobody used at fifty. A hymn. A bus schedule that got rewritten.

Anything at all that was not known in that year and is known now.

And say them out loud rather than thinking them, because thinking them lets them stay vague, and vague evidence never beats a definite sentence.

You are putting three definite things against one vague sentence, and no woman has ever once lost that argument when she actually held it. The Spirit of God is the one who brings a person's own evidence to mind, and it is written that the man made his claim out loud in front of witnesses.