Every Friday, I go to our local nursing home to teach a Bible study. To protect the residents – and to keep those who suffer from dementia from running off – a keypad is located at the door. Only those who know the code can open it.
Understandably, the home is reluctant to share the code with anyone.
So, every time I arrive and every time I leave, one of the staff has to come and open the door. As I watch them punch in the code each week, a thought crosses my mind.
One day, they aren’t going to let me leave.
There was a time when all the residents were just like me. They could come and go as they pleased. They were independent adults – working, raising families, running errands.
But now, they can’t leave. They can’t work. They can’t do the things they used to.
Losing independence is hard.
It means losing control of your life and choices. In a way, it’s like losing your identity. The actress Bette Davis was right when she said, “Getting old isn’t for sissies.”
Jesus warned Peter, “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18). John tells us that Jesus was speaking about Peter’s death, but the picture is familiar to anyone who has watched aging up close.
If we live long enough here on earth, we will all face the decline of our mental and physical capabilities – and we will lose our independence. That is hard to accept, but what may help is to remember that independence is an illusion. When we are young, we are dependent on our parents. As we grow older, we depend on teachers, on employers, on systems we didn’t create.
Even as adults, very few things in our lives are completely under our control. God made us to be dependent on each other – and more importantly, dependent on him.
Without God, we cannot live, breathe, or have our being. We are dependent on him, not just for salvation, but for every heartbeat that leads us there.
Yet God, in his love, gives us some choice – who we marry, what we eat, how we speak to our children.
Those choices can give us the illusion of independence, to the point that we say with the poet, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”
But that is hubris – mistaking limited choice for ultimate control.
Not one person on this planet is independent. No one can do life on their own. It’s physically and metaphorically impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We can’t do anything without God. Remember that when God removes some of the choices from your life. Remember that when your children take away the keys or you need to move into assisted living.
I know that one day they may not punch in the code for me at the nursing home. When that day comes, I pray I remember this: I was never as independent as I thought.
I always needed others.
I always needed God.
Pastor Andrew Schroer has been a pastor for over 25 years and is currently serving at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Edna, Texas. You can find his latest books, “364 Days of Thanksgiving” and “364 Days of Devotion,” on Amazon.com.
