the vanguard

“As men and women grow old together, many people’s natural response is pity. Because the elderly can’t ‘keep up’ anymore, they are thought of as society’s stragglers. Sometimes this comes out in exasperation (on the freeway, when we’re behind somebody in geezer drive), and other times in pity, but the root assumption is the same. A biblical approach, in contrast, would suggest that the elderly among us are the vanguard rather than stragglers. All of us will one day rise, but before we rise, we will all die. Death really is an enemy (1 Cor. 15:55), but it is an enemy that we are besieging, and the elderly among us are at the top of our siege ladders, ready to go over the top of the wall first. The dead in Christ will rise first (1 Thess. 4:16), and then those who are alive” (Douglas Wilson, For a Glory and a Covering, pp. 131-132).