By Todd Paetznick, August 15, 2024

When was the best year of your life?  What happened that made it the best?

Would your answer change if the question was asked slightly differently, “In what year of your life did your accomplishments peak?”  

We all would like to believe that we will continually improve and our accomplishments will never peak, but unfortunately, that’s not reality. Every one of us will reach a top level of performance for whatever we are measuring ourselves against, and then we have no place to go but down. A decline is inevitable.  There is a strategy, however, that will carry us past our peaks so we can continue flourishing for the rest of our lives.

One of the reasons professional athletes often struggle with depression at the end of their sporting career is the sudden realization that what they worked for all of their lives is suddenly gone.  They will no longer enjoy the rewards, notoriety, and often, the wealth that results.  Like professional athletes, too many of us fail to plan for what comes next.  

The strategy for avoiding the despair of realizing you have reached your peak is to look to the future, past, and heavenward from your present.  The Bible offers tremendous advice for those willing to look.

The Past.  What do you wish you knew that would have helped your younger self flourish in the future life?  Often, the things that seem like a crisis at the time appear insignificant later on.  There are other things that were more important that we should have taken more seriously.  We may not be able to change our past, but we can impact the younger generation by sharing our story.   

The Present. We will reach our peak at a point sometime between childhood and retirement age.  When we reach that peak, we often will not realize we are there.  But once we are on a downward slope, there can be depression and despair.  This is why what we use as our measure for success and attainment matters so much.  Is it our physical ability?  Is it wealth?  Is it toys?  Is it power?  Is it pleasure?  How will we measure what is most important?  Choosing to measure how much God is glorified as the result of what we do with our lives can change the game significantly. 

The Future.  We cannot know the future with any certainty, but we can plan and prepare for what is likely.  This includes saving money for a time when we cannot earn as much as we once could, even before what most people consider retirement.  Avoid debt.  Take care of our bodies and minds.  When our primary objective is serving and glorifying God, we must realize that all those things are also a part of that plan.  What would our future selves tell us to do?  We do not have the luxury of passing along notes to our younger selves, but we have deep conversations with people who are older than we are and who have already experienced the life stage we are in right now.  Listen.  

Your Eternal Future.  Plan for how you can bring glory to God at every stage of your life.  This does not mean you must become a preacher or a missionary.  As Christians, we are both preachers and missionaries wherever we go and in whatever we do.  When we care for our families and work in our communities, we are the salt and light God wants us to be.  When we recognize we are only alive for a relatively short while, our focus has to change to what remains forever.  And this focus on the eternal is what we need to share with people who are younger, older, and the same ages as we are.   As Peter wrote, “For, “ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS, AND ALL ITS GLORY IS LIKE THE FLOWER OF GRASS. THE GRASS WITHERS, AND THE FLOWER FALLS OFF, BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER.” And this is the word which was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:24-25 NASB20).