Finishing Our Course with Joy Quotes

“Live each day as if thy last” is a wise word from a hymn written in 1674 by Thomas Ken. The older we get, the more needful its wisdom becomes, and if we have not already taken it to heart, we should do so now.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Real spiritual growth is always growth downward, so to speak, into profounder humility, which in healthy souls will become more and more apparent as they age.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“John Wesley at eighty-five wrote in his journal that the only sign of deterioration that he could see in himself was that he could not run as fast as he used to. With all due deference to that wonderful, seemingly tireless little man, we may reasonably suspect that he was overlooking some things at this point, just as some do when they assure us that they never had a day’s illness in their life. We cannot stop our bodies aging, any more than King Canute’s say-so could stop the tide coming in.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Humility is the product of ongoing repentance as one decides against, turns from, and by watching and praying seeks to steer clear of pride in all its forms. And as the battle against pride in the heart is lifelong, so humility should become an ever more deeply seated attitude of living at the disposal of God and others—an attitude that veteran Christians should increasingly display. Real spiritual growth is always growth downward, so to speak, into profounder humility, which in healthy souls will become more and more apparent as they age.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“God seems always to have intended that the life of humans in this world should be probationary and temporary, and should lead in due course to some form of transformation and transition for a richer life elsewhere”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Wrong Way” is a blunt verbal instrument, waking us up to the fact that we are ignoring something—missing it, as we would say. And that is just what I affirm with regard to our culture’s agenda for aging. I think it is one of the huge follies of our time, about which some frank speaking is in order and indeed overdue. I ask you to bear with me now as I share what I see with regard to the advice that I crystallized in the preceding paragraphs. I see this agenda, well meant as it is, as wrongheaded in the extreme.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“A British professor of theology once described to me the world to which believers will go as “an unknown country with a well-known inhabitant.” When Jesus Christ the courier has already become well known to us through the Gospels and Pastoral Letters of the New Testament, the prospect of transitioning with him into a world in which we shall see him as he is and be constantly in his company will be something we find alluring rather than alarming.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Daydreaming and indulgence of nostalgia are unhappy habits, making for unrealism and discontent. Like all bad habits, they tighten their grip on us until we set ourselves against them and, with God’s help, break them. Elderly retirees are prone to find that a disciplined breaking of them is an increasingly necessary task in life’s last lap, in which steady looking ahead in each present moment becomes a bigger and bigger factor in inner spiritual health.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“spiritual ripeness is worth far more than material wealth in any form, and that spiritual ripeness should continue to increase as one gets older.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Meantime, however, think back with me for a moment to the oldsters’ temptation that I referred to at the start of this chapter, namely, not facing up to the fact that our physical decline is actually happening. Why this obstinate unrealism? The answer is not far to seek. Behind this attitude stands pride—pride, the essence of original sin as Augustine diagnosed it; pride, the irrational, insatiable drive always to be the one on top and in charge, always honoring, serving, and pleasing the great god self; pride, that treats domination, control, and outscoring rivals as a never-ending task. Those who have had successful careers are often in dominant positions when old age sets in, retirement becomes due, and bowing out is the appropriate action, and it should cause no surprise when they resist the prospect and try to evade or at least postpone it.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Between human beings in and beyond middle age a comparable difference appears. Some grow old gracefully, meaning, fully in the grip of the grace of God. Increasingly they display a well-developed understanding with a well-formed character: firm, resilient, and unyielding, with an unfailing sense of proportion and abundant resources for upholding and mentoring others.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Listen again to Shakespeare. In his tragedy King Lear, one of the world’s classics on dysfunctional families, a dispossessed son who refuses to be embittered by the way he has been treated comments thus on his blinded father’s loss of the will to live: Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all. (act 5, scene 2)”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“Yet who would choose that prospect if they thought that for up to half a century, certainly more than a third of their extended life, they would be victims of dementia? This is a possibility that can hardly be ruled out, for already one in four of us oldest old experience dementia in some form, and clearly the odds will shorten the longer our lives last. Be that as it may, these pages address those who, by God’s grace, still have their faculties more or less intact; who recognize that, as is often and truly said, aging is not for wimps; and who want to learn, in a straightforward way, how we may continue living to God’s glory as we get older.”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging

“[Racers] always try to keep something in reserve for a final sprint…so far as our bodily health allows, we should aim to be found running the last lap of our Christian life, as we would say, flat out. The final sprint, so I urge, should be a sprint indeed (pp. 21-22).”
― J.I. Packer, Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging