The local paper recently ran a piece which included some comments about the former pastor of a church in our community. His friends and family talked about how he had “retired” several years ago. Scare quotes in the original. Webster tells us that scare quotes are “quotation marks used to express especially skepticism or derision.” Apparently, the former pastor’s friends and family are skeptical as to his actual retirement.
This summer will mark the fifth anniversary of my – no scare quotes – retirement. Also, the fiftieth anniversary of my entry into full-time ministry. I’ve been thinking about retirement, its meaning and its purpose. Today I continue with Part II of a four-part series:
- Retirement as a gift from God
- Retirement as a gift for others
- Retirement as a call to look forward
- Retirement as a time to look back
As I wrote last week, I should add that my retirement is pretty traditional. Five years ago, I quit receiving a paycheck, moved out of my office, and was no longer bound to a position description and job expectations. In those five years our retirement income has proven to be more than adequate, my health is good, and my energy level is high. We also moved 600 miles from the place we had called home to a new house and home we enjoy greatly. I understand that some people cannot afford to retire, and others enter retirement with regrets and worries of different sorts. So, as I think about retirement, most of the data comes from my own good experience and from conversations and observations from those around me. I will cite no studies and offer no footnotes.
II. RETIREMENT AS A GIFT FOR OTHERS
Retirement is a gift from God, one of the seasons in life he imbues with purpose. Like all seasons of life, retirement is given that we might glorify God and enjoy him in it. Among the ways we glorify and enjoy God in all seasons of life is in our love for our neighbors. We glorify and enjoy God differently in retirement, however, than we do in other seasons of life. Unbound from the obligations and responsibilities of paycheck labor, we have more time to give, more time to serve, more time to love.
As the earliest members of the Baby Boom cohort began to ponder retirement, Pastor John Piper pleaded with them not to waste their lives. He contrasted the lives of two women in their 80s, members of his congregation, who had lost their lives serving and loving others in Africa with an early retired couple whose story was featured in a national magazine. Still in their 50s, they were content to spend their time collecting seashells on the beach near their retirement home in Florida. “Don’t waste your life,” the preacher implored them.
Among those in the great cloud of witnesses who have modeled a not-wasted retirement to me: Bob and Louise who shared their love of the high country of the Sierra Nevada with a generation of youth and families from our church; Anniebelle Anderson who taught Sunday school to the children of Lake Grove, Oregon, for sixty years; Joe Hill, a pastor and scholar, who served so many churches and touched so many lives after his retirement as a professor; Dr. Vic, a beloved pediatrician, who literally saved the lives of several children through his volunteer work at a medical clinic in rural Guatemala; Lee and Lynn who helped keep the old Christian school building in North Philadelphia in good repair and useful for an incredible ministry in that tough neighborhood; Bill and Mary, friends from long ago, who, among many other things, organize and run a “cousins camp” every year for all their grandchildren.
I am not a physician and I have no handyman skills, but my retirement is still a gift of time to be used in love and service of others. I retired from the fulltime pastorate, but not from being a husband, father, grandfather, and friend. I did not retire from collegial relationships in the church. I could never repair the (once again) broken drinking fountain at Hunting Park Christian Academy, but I am able to fill the pulpit for a tired pastor in a small church who needs some time away. I can’t diagnose a faulty heart valve or a childhood cancer, but I can pray for and encourage those whose lives touch mine.
As I journey through retirement, I must always ask myself, “How might I glorify God and enjoy him today?”