Crown of the Aged

Sean Because obviously just getting old doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s glory. Age by itself is a multiplier of whether you have God’s blessing or judgment. It can actually look better, or it can look worse — more ugly — as somebody gets older, if they’re ignoring God in that process.

Philip All right. Welcome to another episode of All Are Yours. We’re still here. We’re still offering you all the things.

Sean We are the delight to their ears.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Watching the videos — mm. Probably still a delight to their ears.

Philip That’s right. You could watch it.

Sean Did you see that Ross Douthat is now at 60 Minutes? So he’s not at the New York Times anymore. He was a writer for the New York Times, and then he started his podcast. But now he’s at 60 Minutes. And I think his first bit, or whatever that would be called, aired last night.

And already on Twitter people were saying, “Yeah, he has a face for radio and a voice for print.” Which is really bad.

Philip Yeah.

Sean If you could at least have a face for radio, then you can keep talking. So: people listening to us are probably more delighted than they’d be looking at us.

Philip That’s right.

Sean I don’t know.

Philip Well, I think I’ve mentioned before that at least one audience member who did look at us referred to you as “the old guy.”

Sean The old guy, yeah.

Philip The old guy, that’s right. At least relative to the other guy on the screen, you’re the old guy.

Sean I did have reason — I was looking up something I had preached a long time ago, and it still had some video with it, and it was ten years ago. Even ten years ago, the gray was starting to come into my beard, but it was not dominating. Can you see anything but gray in the beard now? Probably not.

Philip It has taken over.

Sean The quality of camera that I’m using here —

Philip That’s right.

Sean I think there’s a little red hair in there every once in a while now. But yeah. So people have come to start calling me Santa Claus.

Philip There you go. Which is something of an accomplishment.

Sean Father Christmas maybe would be more Narnian than Santa Claus. But yeah — the old guy.

Philip The old guy. That’s right. And so we thought maybe it’d be relevant to talk a little bit about your elderly season of life, and the glory that comes with that.

In one way, whether or not young people are looking forward to getting old, it is in front of them. It is before them. And so, if they don’t die, they will attain to that season.

Sean Yeah, they can’t look forward to anything else than getting old, other than dying. Those are your only options to look forward to when you’re a young person.

Philip Correct. And there are different trials that come with that as well — whether it’s physical aches and pains that were not there when you were twenty, or different kinds of emotional and relational pains, more experience of different relationships going in different directions. So there are more trials that an older man has gone through than a younger man, clearly.

But also there is a certain kind of glory that comes with that season of life. A certain — at least —

Sean Glory if there is God’s blessing. Because obviously just getting old doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s glory. Age by itself is a multiplier of whether you have God’s blessing or judgment. It can actually look better, or it can look worse — more ugly — as somebody gets older, if they’re ignoring God in that process.

Philip Right. And at that season of life, a lot of the fruit is starting to be harvested already, or is coming at you. Whether it was sown in the flesh or sown in the Spirit is becoming more clear, more obvious. You’re reaping what you were sowing for a few decades.

Sean Right.

Philip And in particular, the season of grandkids — that is a very vivid fruit. How you raised your own children, and then how that is being mirrored or duplicated or multiplied in the grandkids, and certain things are becoming evident.

Even the famous Bible passage in Proverbs says that grandchildren are the crown of the aged. So it’s presented as something that ought to be a glory, something that is making the older person look good, making the aged look majestic, glorified in some way.

Sean It seems like even for a young person there’s a way to desire grandkids before you have kids, without necessarily skipping over what it means to love and raise your own kids. It’s not that your children are no good, but it’s your children’s children that you’re really excited about — it’s not like that. But there still is a way to envision God’s blessing decades later, which takes significant faith.

I definitely did not think about the glory of being a grandfather when I was younger. That’s been a more recent thing. I’ve got four grandkids already, and then my oldest daughter is pregnant again. So Lord willing, come spring there’ll be five grandkids.

Philip That’s three grandsons right now and one granddaughter.

Sean Yeah, so we’ve got pink and blue. We’ve got both. It’s delightful.

While also still having two kids at home — and they’re both older kids, both in high school even. So we’re not quite done raising our own kids, sending them off, while also getting to start enjoying grandkids.

Philip Yeah.

Sean I don’t know what I envisioned it was going to be like. I think it’s better and more glorious than what I was anticipating. But I think we’d like to get more people anticipating that kind of glory, getting into that stage.

A friend of mine told me that his father-in-law told him that your fifties were your best decade, because you still had some energy and you presumably had gained some wisdom in your life by that point. I have started the decade of my fifties. I’m not sure it’s the best one yet, but it is full of a lot of really good things, including the grandkids, like you’re saying.

Philip Yeah. I think if you are the baton, and the first runner is the younger age and the second runner is the older age, then maybe you right now are in the season where they’re both still holding on and one is starting to let go. And you, as the baton, are now going to be in that older stage.

Even what you’re saying: you still have some kids at home in high school, so there still is some of that parenting work finishing off that lap, while you already have married children who are having their own kids. And in other ways as well, you’re seeing the fruit of your labors one way or another.

So maybe it’d be good — one, for young people, people like myself or even younger than me, who are just getting married or about to get married: what should their mindset be entering into family life as they look forward forty, fifty years into being grandparents and more? And then also for those grandparents who are maybe having a certain kind of nostalgic regret, a “better were the previous days” kind of attitude.

So in both senses: what are some principles? How should people be thinking about that role, that season of being older, being in that next stage of life — both as a grandparent, and as more of the reaping is happening there?

Sean Yeah. It definitely seems that God himself delights in a certain kind of agedness. It was his plan. He could have made us image bearers who hit a ceiling at thirty-five and then just stay there for however many more years.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean We stay the same kind of physical shape, the same physical energy, and we just hit that ceiling and stay there for however many more decades. But God didn’t make it that way. It’s not obvious that aging is due to sin.

The breakdown, the pains — yes, those would be a consequence of sin. But the aging part itself? We can only sort of imagine what Adam and Eve would have gotten to had they not sinned. What would it have looked like for them to be 800 years old and still not have sinned? Would they still have had the same hair color? Would Adam have lost his hair — is his baldness a result of the fall, or is that actually just a sign that says you’re getting older? Gray hair and not baldness, whatever it is.

But God himself seems to value a certain kind of age. Even the illustration of who is supposed to lead in the church, and those people being elders.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Because there’s something valuable about having some more life, some more experience. In our current culture, as soon as you get old there is less esteem. We’re more of a culture of youth.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And in the Proverbs as well, young men have a particular kind of glory that’s just different from the kind of glory that old men have.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean If the strength of young men is their glory and the gray hair is the glory of older men — that’s not to say you can’t have any glory until you’re older, but there’s the kind of weight that belongs with a life pursuing God’s blessing, that would only get better.

Like certain kinds of drinks. Or — they don’t really think about tobacco as being better if it’s aged, do they? I’m still an amateur tobaccoist.

Philip There has to be some time that it —

Sean Yeah, probably not just overnight.

Philip Right. At —

Sean Some kind of age, yeah. But certain drinks, wines —

Philip Just not milk.

Sean Right. Though cheeses — some cheeses you do actually want held on to for a long time.

Anyway, there’s a kind of maturity that is more tasty, not just a kind of maturity that is less helpful. And to be able to see that that is a thing you get to look forward to, as opposed to, “oh, I’ve got to stay young as much as I possibly can.”

I’m not opposed to some of the emphasis online these days of get healthy, get strong, lift weights, eat right, whatever, to extend as much vigor as you can.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean There’s a sense in which that is okay — but not if you are afraid of gray hair, or afraid of people thinking that you’re the old guy. If I was afraid of people thinking I was the old guy, we would have had to stick to just audio. Not that they could imagine I was in my youth.

But thinking that it’s valuable because God thinks it’s valuable seems right. And even then, the instruction God gives to the younger is to honor their elders — obviously in terms of parents, but even in terms of the church. In 1 Peter chapter 5, the youth are supposed to honor their elders. So there’s something good about it, when the elder people are living still for God himself.

Philip Right. And even the verse you brought up, about the glory of young men being their strength and the glory of the older man being his gray hair, his extra experience, the life that he’s lived — there’s a certain amount of energy that a young man has. Energy in the hunt, energy in the pursuit. Energy even in the sowing.

And in some sense — you and I were talking about this recently — a certain kind of naive energy, maybe. You had mentioned the eighteen-year-olds on the beach at Normandy, charging the beach. It takes that particular age group to be able to do something like that, where you’re just yelling “Geronimo” and going for it. You’re not looking back.

So that kind of strength, that kind of energy is there. And it’s also there, I think, to be able to collect, to be able to pick up, real substance, as that energy is being put to good use. And then that substance is ripening and maturing as it’s being compacted — like coal is made. It’s compacted, and there’s a lot of energy being built up and stored in that real substance, that then is able to burn for a long time later in life as well.

So without that strength, that energy being put to good use as a young man, the older man doesn’t even have that level of substance that he’s looking back on, and maybe building on, or helping others with.

Sean Yeah. It’s one thing to slow down because you’re rusting. It’s another thing to slow down because you’re pulling a lot of weight.

Even in that conversation you and I were having that you referenced — the analogy of a train engine. The engine that doesn’t have any cars attached to it wants to get going, and should get going. Nothing wrong with speed. But if a man is then collecting cars and starts pulling more and more cars — the responsibility, that sort of glory that he’s pulling along, obviously with his own family, but even in terms of other work opportunities, other seeds that he’s sown. I know that’s mixing metaphors. But if he’s slowing down because he’s pulling a lot of cars, then the force has actually multiplied, even though according to miles per hour it’s less.

So, thinking about being a grandfather who’s got a lot of cars attached. And there are ways, I’m sure, to misunderstand that analogy — it’s not like all of the cars are absolutely only depending on the patriarch. And yet at the same time, he ought to be leading the way. He ought to be pulling them along in the right way, going first, pulling them along. And that’s a sign of his strength, not a sign of his weakness.

Philip Right.

Sean Even if the miles per hour aren’t quite the same as they were when there were fewer cars.

Philip Right. Yeah, I do appreciate the label of paterfamilias — that Roman head of household.

Sean Yeah.

Philip It makes me think of a certain kind of provider who is not just in it for himself. He’s providing, and providing not just directly for members of the household, but providing an entire atmosphere for other people to be sowing and reaping and building within as well. So, a certain kind of community provider in that way.

The Bible talks about the man who’s sitting at the gate. That sort of man is somebody who has life experience, who has wisdom that he’s collected, and then he’s providing for the people in that city, in that community. So even what the provision looks like for the older paterfamilias: he is trusted. His word has a certain kind of weight, because it comes with experience, it comes with substance. It even comes out of his own mistakes, his own sin that he’s had to overcome, learn from, repent from.

And so the heart there is a heart of a provider. When I think about a paterfamilias, it’s someone who is a bestower of blessing. Even the — is that the Aaronic blessing? “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you.” That kind of blessing is what the paterfamilias is actively thinking about and concerns himself with — for his household, for his family, and then for his extended family, his community.

That is a much deeper, much broader glory than the sort of individualistic youth that a lot of the modern culture is aspiring to. So even when you are working out, being healthy as a young guy — what is that for? What are you doing that for? Is it just for yourself? Or is that being done so that you could be enabled, be equipped, to be a better provider, to be able to think about others in that way?

I think it is a huge privilege, an honor, for a man to be able to provide for his family. To be able to provide for his wife so that she doesn’t have to worry herself with certain things, because the man is there to protect and provide. For his kids to be able to play — using Chesterton’s analogy — to play without any risk, without any sense of fear, along the precipice, because there’s a fence built there. There’s a wall built to keep those kids safe, and that is being done by that paterfamilias, by that provider. And as that’s sown and built throughout the decades, that sort of glory is being reaped later in life.

Sean Sure. Obviously each individual case is going to have its own background, but — the number of isolated and alone older people who don’t have anybody come visit them. You’re like, where’s their family? Where’s their kids? Where’s their grandkids?

And again, without knowing every case individually, it does actually seem in many cases that the reason nobody comes to visit them is because they weren’t spending their life for other people either.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean They weren’t actually doing the providing. They weren’t doing any connecting. There wasn’t any gravity that they ever brought with them. And so now no one is drawn or attracted to them either.

That doesn’t mean that adult kids can’t be selfish and forget their responsibilities. It doesn’t mean that grandkids couldn’t get that wrong as well and need to get things figured out. But in many cases, a person who is old and alone is a person who was living like they were alone, living for themselves, in the previous decades. So they are actually reaping what they were sowing.

Philip Right.

Sean And that is sad, and something to be avoided. So with that youthful energy — that is a good time to make sure that the connections are strong, that the cars on the train are actually hooked up.

Philip Right.

Sean And then there would presumably be more gathering round. And that wouldn’t stop. Even when the grandkids get older and they’re busy, sure — but there’s still a draw toward those ones who were giving to them in the first place. If you don’t give, then there’s not going to be a lot to —

Philip Right. Yeah, I think the opposite of provider, the opposite of giver, is taker. Someone who is grabby.

When a parent of young children is grabby with his kids — “leave me alone, I’m tired” — or he comes home from work and instead of giving himself to his kids, he’s expecting certain things from his kids. He’s trying to take calmness from his kids. Or he’s trying to take a certain kind of atmosphere for himself from his kids. And so he’s pushing them away.

And unless that kind of grabbiness, that taking attitude — which is the opposite of the call for the husband, the opposite of the call for the father, a role that is one of bestowing blessing, not trying to take from others — unless that is repented of, we’ve seen older people cross that threshold and continue to be grabby, but now it’s much more remorseful grabbiness. It’s “my kids never come to visit, my grandkids are never there with me.” And so it’s almost like trying to heap guilt onto the kids for not being around, for not visiting, for ignoring them. So it’s more and more ongoing grabbiness. It’s just a different season, but the root did not get repented of.

Sean Yeah, because the message when they were younger was “leave me alone.”

Philip Right.

Sean And then they learned the lesson. So now, decades later, they’re giving you what you said you wanted earlier. They’re leaving you alone.

So, recognizing — because the two parts that you said we should try to cover: what is the mindset of a younger person anticipating getting older, and then, for those of us who are older, what should we be doing now?

Well, younger persons recognizing that they should want to get cars hooked up to their train. Get the speed going, get the cars hooked up, be connected, so that you’ve sown a lot of good things. You have that sort of gravity established. Your message has not been “leave me alone.” Your message is, “here’s what I have for you. I’m giving this to you,” not just trying to take what I want whenever I want.

Philip Right.

Sean In terms of the older persons: then not having the mindset of, “okay, well now I’m done. I’ve done my part.”

At our church, we don’t really have children’s church. We don’t have Sunday school. So for the most part, kids are in with us — including really young kids. We have a room that parents can sometimes take their noisy little worshippers to, and help them learn, and have a little bit more freedom in a spot to talk about why they need to pay attention or whatever. But in general we have a lot of families that bring their kids with them into the service and are showing them how to do it.

And at times we’ve had grandparents who want to sit in the same row as their children and then grandchildren, but then want to be left alone so they can just focus themselves on the service — and therefore not help. And in some conversations with them: well, you could help. By doing something with your grandkids, the squirrely ones. You don’t have to have them on your lap the entire time, but you could have them for some amount of time. You could bring something fun for them to do — a little candy, or some new crayons, or whatever it is for the activity sheet.

But then listening to the grandparents say, “Well, no. I’ve done my part. I’m done.” Well — what kind of joy are you missing out on by again distancing yourself? It’s missing the glory of the grandkids.

Or even Psalm 128. It’s Psalm 128: “Blessed is the man that fears Jehovah.”

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean “You shall see your children’s children.”

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean That’s a sign of God’s blessing. Blessed is the man that fears Jehovah and walks in his ways. What does that look like? Well, it looks like, when you’re younger, seeing your children around the table with your wife. And when you’re older, it looks like grandkids — seeing your children’s children. And participating with them, rather than just trying to say, “Hey, I’ve given my effort, and now it’s time for me to be done.”

Philip Yeah. In any time period, but maybe particularly in our period, when travel is much easier and work is more global — it is a big blessing, that not everybody gets to experience, to be able to worship with your children and your grandchildren Lord’s Day in and Lord’s Day out. Every Lord’s Day.

To be able to sit in the same row with your kids and grandkids and worship together every Sunday, that is a huge blessing. Something not to be taken for granted. Something to be full of gratitude for.

So again, the attitude ought not to be trying to take from your kids or from your grandkids a certain kind of quiet focus, or time of introspection. This is a huge blessing — we’re here participating together. Now my grandkids can see me worship, and I can see them, in their own way, loving Jesus and loving being together with the church and participating in their own way. That is jealousable. That is something to want.

And so the attitude even of coming to church — we talk about this all the time at TEC — that we are a congregation, we are an assembly, we’re together as a people beholding God. It’s not just me worshiping as an individual, it’s us together. Even during our communion, we’re encouraged to acknowledge and be thinking about the fact that we’re here together. It’s not just a time of introspection in isolation.

Sean Yeah. Look around.

Philip Right.

Sean Look at your people.

Philip Right. And how awesome is it to be looking around and seeing your grandkids there with you, participating in communion, participating in worshiping God? That kind of joy and fellowship is a huge blessing.

Sean Yeah. Potentially that is obvious — and also, nothing goes without saying.

It seems to me — and I’m in a unique position most Sundays, because I’m actually up on stage and I’m looking at the people coming down. When you’re helping serve, you’re obviously seeing people come down as well. And I am glad to see all of the people come. Whether they’re holding their kids or they’re holding their grandkids, regularly I’m trying to make eye contact and smile with people, either as they come down the aisle, or even when we’re still singing and I’m looking around throughout the room itself.

But yeah, it’s absolutely fun to get to see my kids bring their kids. And none of them have been baptized yet, so they’re not actually doing communion yet, but they’re still participating, they’re still coming through. And as I look around and I get to see my immediate family as well as the church family — that’s a great encouragement.

So to me that would seem obvious. If I was not me, if I was a person who was just worshiping with the flock — “wow, that guy, I bet he would like seeing his grandkids.” And that is true. I can confirm that that is a great thing to get to do.

And we don’t have any rules about where our married kids are going to go. Especially when we have three daughters — when it’s time to give the daughter to the dude, well, it’s time for her to go where the dude goes. So we don’t have rules about you’ve got to live in our county, or our zip code, or our city, or how many miles away, or that you even have to keep coming to TEC. We don’t have those rules.

But so far we have been blessed with the two married kids still desiring to participate, and recognizing that it’s for their own good. So again, without a rule, it’s a get-to, not a got-to. It’s an opportunity that is strategic, one that is worth choosing and even sacrificing for — while they maybe could make money, or at least pay less taxes, or have easier mortgage payments, in another part of the country, or another red state instead of blue state.

But they also are seeing the vision for their own families. They see the connection to their own parents, to Mo and me.

Philip Right.

Sean Or for their kids to be with their grandparents. And currently it’s a blessing because both my son-in-law’s and my daughter-in-law’s families are also local.

Philip Right.

Sean So eventually that’s going to be even more cousins that we’ll get to share. Russians know all about the cousins.

Philip Correct.

Sean So you have that part.

Philip When we join a different church, we have our cousins come join with us too.

Sean That’s right. But I lived half an hour away from my closest cousins when I was younger, and they weren’t Christians, so we wouldn’t have lots of contact. My kids don’t actually even have any cousins at this point. We have some fake cousins that we let them consider that way.

Philip But —

Sean Hopefully my kids’ kids will really be able to delight in that. And that becomes a force — a troop, a host.

Philip Yeah.

Sean Of grandkids, or from their own perspective, of cousins. And that is part of a blessing.

Philip Right.

Sean That is not a burden — even though it’s work. It’s worth it.

Philip Yeah. I’ve thought — oh, go ahead.

Sean Well, I was going to say, I have been thinking a lot about Titus 2 as well, which is specifically the virtues for the older man.

Philip Yeah.

Sean And specifically, the last three are sort of put together under “be healthy in faith, in love, and in endurance,” or steadfastness. Those are interesting to think about as being beneficial for the older man — who could potentially, the older and more experienced he’s gotten, be less likely to live by faith and more likely to live by sight. Or he’s more likely to be cynical and lose some of the faith and hope that should be part of the Christian’s life no matter what age they’re at.

So the older man being healthy or sound in faith means he’s continuing to acknowledge his life in dependence on God. The being sound or healthy in love is also interesting, because that’s sort of the opposite of isolation. It’s sort of the opposite of what you had said even earlier, that as we get older we see more problems than when we were younger.

Philip Right.

Sean Even Solomon said that in much wisdom and knowledge is much grief and sorrow. And presumably, if you’ve got your eyes open and you’re paying attention, you have more wisdom as you get older. Again, if God blesses, there’s more wisdom — which means there’s more grief, which means there’s more people who could have hurt you, more people that you’ve had to choose whether to forgive or not. And you have a better idea of how annoying they are. So, the importance of the older man being healthy in love.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean I don’t think that’s just a vertical comment about how he should love God more, though that would be included. It seems like it would include the horizontal relationships.

Philip Right.

Sean And then healthy in endurance, or steadfastness, means you don’t actually get to quit just because you’re older. No — endurance is supposed to carry the whole way through.

As I have been meditating on those in particular, I’ve found it really fruitful. Hmm: there is still more to believe. There is still more love to enjoy and share. Love sacrifices, love gives itself for the others. And then not getting to just say, “Well, I’m punching the time card now. I’ve done my job, so I’m out of here.”

Philip Right. Yeah, I think when you have more to lose, your investment is more cautious. You’re slower to invest, maybe. You’re thinking about it more. And also, when you have more to lose, it means you also have more to invest.

Just to bring in Elon Musk as an example: his business growth has been that he succeeded in a certain thing, sold out, then reinvested that into something bigger, sold out, reinvested that into something bigger. So every time he’s starting from scratch with a much bigger starting balance, and he could do that much more.

That makes me think of that kind of soundness and endurance for the old man — to not cash out and then coast. “I’m done. I’ve achieved, here’s my fruit, now I’m just going to consume.” But to be able to get to a certain point and then reinvest that fruit, in all of those ways. To be able to continue growing, continue learning —

Sean No, go ahead.

Philip That also, I think, requires a vision that goes beyond just this lifetime. Knowing that other people beyond us are going to reap from the seeds that we sowed. They’re going to eat of the fruit of the trees that we did not see grow. We sowed those seeds, maybe they sprouted, and then we died — but then the next generation gets to enjoy that.

So that bestower of blessing, the paterfamilias, has that sort of mindset, where he’s sowing up until his death, not just for himself to reap but for others to reap. And also then to have the mindset that the reaping, even for himself, extends beyond just this lifetime.

When the master says, “Well done, good and faithful servant, I will put you over ten cities” — that is a certain kind of reaping that is then productive reaping, that he could also reinvest. So what we sow and reap and sow here is also connected. Jesus connects it; he wants us to connect it in our minds to us reaping and sowing and building in eternity as well.

And so for the older man to have soundness and endurance, to be able to think beyond just his own life of consumption here — there’s more than just that. It’s for others here, and it’s also for the work I’m going to be doing on the other side of the grave.

Sean Yeah, John Piper’s famous illustration that goes around is: don’t just go collect seashells. Don’t retire and collect seashells.

I think I would want to — and maybe even he would at this point, I’m not sure. Obviously that’s a sticky illustration, and it can produce maybe the right kind of guilt, as necessary, on a person. But the problem is not the seashells themselves. The problem would be the isolation. The problem would be, “I have finally earned my right to be selfish, so that I can just go relax and pick seashells.”

Philip But —

Sean There is a way to even slow down and spend more time on the beach, and do that in a way that is thanking God and recognizing his control over the oceans, and bringing your grandkids along with you, or showing them your awesome collection — bringing them into your life via your retirement and your seashell collection.

Philip Right.

Sean Is it on behalf of them, and sharing your life with them? Or is it again just to have your own life, and finally you’ve saved up enough money to be able to do that? Same seashells, collected for different reasons.

The “don’t collect seashells, and just move to Africa and live in a hut because you have finished your regular working life” — which is sometimes more the impression you get from a John Piper kind of preaching style —

Philip Right.

Sean — that could actually be just as selfish as well.

Philip Sure.

Sean So there have got to be ways to recognize what makes the glory. Like we keep coming back to: what is it that is the glory? The glory is the love shared, the love given, the presence of that person on behalf of his people. And that’s a thing you can start practicing at any age, but hopefully it develops and sweetens as it matures over time.

At our house, for our Saturday night dinners, most Saturdays we’re able to have everybody back — which means grandkids are back. And all the grandkids are four years and younger at this point. So it’s renewed chaos. It’s a lot of taking care of very little ones again. And that is opportunity for fun. It is loud, and that’s part of the joy.

Philip Right.

Sean And trying to make that as easy for them as we can. Ideally, as we get older, maybe some of the kids will be able to add some more of the pulling of the weight of the work itself, that we can all enjoy. But for now, that continues to be delightful, and something that — we’re not going “neener neener, look what we get.” And also: hey, God, thank you for what you have given us.

Philip Right. So, two questions, I think, from that perspective of a man who has adult children and has grandchildren.

What approach should a grandfather have toward his grandchildren, particularly from that role of grandfather? And maybe connected with that: what kind of opportunities does he have as a grandfather that he didn’t have as a young dad — or that their dad, at that same age, does not have, because of his age or time commitments or whatever? So how should a grandfather be thinking about his relationship to his grandkids? How can he be providing for them specifically, directly, in ways he maybe couldn’t have provided for his own kids when they were young?

And then, connected in tandem with that: what relationship should he have to his own adult children, who are also raising and parenting their kids? What should his approach be to his children, even in connection with his grandchildren — or even apart from that, just his direct relationship with his adult children?

Sean Yeah. I’ll take that last one first. It can be super fun.

I have been able to get monthly cigar nights started — once a month with my son-in-law and then my son. That’s actually really great. Obviously it doesn’t need to be cigars, whatever. It just gives us an opportunity. Could be chocolate. Yeah, that seems like it’d be over too fast.

But we sit in lawn chairs in my driveway so far, and we’ve got a good hour and a half, two, two and a half hours.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean We’ve got something in our hands, and then we get to talk about whatever. And that is fun. Again, it doesn’t have to be a date with your grown adult sons, or sons-in-law, whatever. But so far we talk about whatever, whether it’s directly about their work as fathers, and I’m trying to give them some perspective.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean That is probably as much of the cause — because almost everybody knows the basics, at least in a good community already. People are talking about the true things. But being able to give the personal reminders, the affirmation, correction if necessary, but a lot of perspective. Like, well, it looks like this, which you might not be able to see from being inside. But there are these good things that are really happening.

So especially in a community where guys want to do better, and they want to be fruitful, and they want to see the results, it is a beneficial thing to be able to say to them: well, nope — look at what results God has given. And yeah, keep working. Don’t quit. But also make sure you’re recognizing what God is establishing in your household, or even with your own kids so far.

So, being able to look for opportunities to provide affirmation. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” — we learned that even from the Heavenly Father with his adult Son.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean “I’m pleased with you. I love you. I’m pleased with you. I want other people to know it.” Being able to give that even to our adult kids is, I think, only good for their souls, and an encouragement there.

In terms of then how to directly — or what opportunities there are for the grandkids themselves. I think of at least one of our fellow elders, who has actually been able to retire from his day job, so to speak. And the amount of tutoring he’s able to do with some of his grandkids, whose dads are still working — they’ve got full-time jobs.

Is that necessary? Would those grandkids not learn math if their granddad couldn’t meet with them online or whatever to work through it?

Philip Maybe.

Sean Probably they could pick it up somehow. But for our fellow elder — he’s got some time, and this is a way to invest in his grandkids, even in their education. He’s got some skill and understanding in a particular subject, so he’s able to share that with them, and that then enables other opportunities. So that when it’s time to go for ice cream, that’s not all that they’re sharing — they’re actually able to enjoy the ice cream and the math at the same time.

So probably it’s all different. But maybe the biggest sort of warning is not to get grabby with your grandkids’ attention. Not to put a bunch of pressure on them, like your identity as a grandparent depends on whether they like you or not on any given day. Because they also have different swings, different attentiveness, different personalities.

So we don’t want to, as older people, be dependent on them for our good feelings. That’s again a different kind of grabbiness. To the degree that we can avoid any complaints, to the degree we can avoid anxiety — “do they like me? do they not like me?” That’s not what a grandparent should be, ideally. That’s not substance. That’s dependence, rather than letting the grandkids depend on us.

Philip Right.

Sean So — how’s that for some answers?

Philip Yeah, it’s good. I think that also connects with being healthy in faith and healthy in love.

If you were to contrast faith with anxiety — that kind of lack of security in your identity, even in Christ, trying to find your identity in being a grandparent. “My grandkids are not being reciprocal. I don’t feel that from them.” And so you’re more anxious. That’s the opposite of being healthy in faith.

And then also healthy in love: having that relationship of giving. If love is even primarily expressed in the act of giving — giving of yourself, of your time, of your strength, whatever, giving out of yourself — that is giving without expecting a return. You’re not expecting thank-you cards or thank-you phone calls, but you’re just giving of yourself because that is your nature.

So connecting both of those things, faith and love, calling older men to be healthy there — in some sense, I think, assumes that you ought to be getting healthier the older you get. Your faith should be healthier when you’re sixty than what it was when you were thirty. Your love should be more sound when you’re older than when you were younger.

And so the man who was working on his godliness, his training in godliness, who’s working on getting more healthy in those things — that comes to my mind too: that’s something an older man has that he didn’t have when he was a young father. The health of faith, the health of love that he can offer. Even playing the long game in this, or giving, like you said, perspective — but giving the perspective of the long game to your kids and your grandkids, even in your own demeanor. You’re providing a certain kind of stability, a certain kind of patience in your approach with whatever they’re going through. There’s that kind of rudder, I guess, in that way.

Sean Yeah, that relates all those things directly to 2 Corinthians 4:18 — 16 through 18: we don’t lose heart, even though the outer man is wasting away, the inner man is being renewed day by day, as he looks not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are temporal and passing away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean That is not in context directly about parenting or grandparenting, but there’s obviously some application there. Yeah, physically you’re losing strength, but inwardly you can be gaining strength. There can be a healthier inner man, like you’re saying, as the inner man is being renewed. And that relates to the faith of living on unseen things.

Which is part of that eternal game, so to speak — being able to recognize what is happening that is deeper than what is surface, what is visible. And it’s easy, because we do have eyes, and we do have nervous systems that tell us when things are hurting.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean God gave us those as well. But the faith — the Vive Fide—

Philip Or Ride—

Sean — Ride, as I’ve been playing with recently. The living by faith on the unseen things, on God himself directly. These are parts of the glory of older people that they can share with their grandkids.

Philip Yeah, for sure. So, about my grandpa — he passed a couple of years ago. He was ninety-three. And when he died, he had 137 people under him, under his kind of provision, if you may, in his domain.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So he had eight —

Sean If a quiver is five, what is 137?

Philip That’s right. Yeah.

He had eight sons and three daughters. I think two of his kids, a son and a daughter, died before he did. One died when he was seventeen — it was an accident, he drowned. And then another daughter died when she was older already. So, seven sons.

I was grandkid number fourteen out of forty. So, a big family.

In Russia, over the course of about twenty years, as his kids were young and growing up, he spent twelve of those years in prison, in state prison. So there was a lot of time that he did not get to devote or invest into his kids. With eight sons and three daughters, there’s a lot of what you could say was missed opportunity, missed time.

And then when the whole family moved here to America in 1991, that’s a certain kind of context — it’s an immigrant family, it’s a new culture, a new environment. And so everybody’s sticking together. Everybody is close, not just going to the same church, but — every Sunday after church, all of us were always at my grandparents’ house. We had Lord’s Day dinner together every single Sunday.

And if I think back about it now, we all wanted to be there. Of the seven sons and three daughters, they’re married, they have kids — everybody wanted to be there. The grandkids wanted to be there. We were little, so we all had to go, because we were with our parents. But there was not any “oh, I don’t want to go there.”

The house was loud. It was a lot of noise, a lot of commotion. My grandparents would have been in their sixties at that point — maybe late fifties, early sixties. And yeah, that is Psalm 128. Your children’s children compassing your table round. You see that, and you’re growing up in that. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of singing, a lot of theology, Bible-study-type conversations.

Thinking about it now, that is a huge blessing that God allowed my grandpa to have for the last twenty, twenty-five years of his life — from sixty to ninety or so — to be able to see his adult children, his grandchildren.

And yeah, there are a lot of problems in our big family; you’re more likely to have different sorts of problems. But it’s still a particular kind of blessing that all of his sons respected him, all of his sons heeded his words, were listening, attentive. And even when he died, there was an obvious kind of honor, an obvious kind of respect from all of his kids.

That sort of blessing, I think, is jealousable. You want that. You want that kind of soundness in faith and love and endurance, where your grandkids, your great-grandkids — and in his particular case, I think he had two or three great-great-grandchildren when he died — that they look to you with a sense of gratitude to God for you. That is a huge blessing.

Sean Absolutely.

Philip Yeah. All right, well there you have it. The crown of the aged — and we’re working toward that.

Sean Now, before we sign off: should we say that we have made a decision related to All Are Yours?

Philip Yes. In 2027.

Sean Yeah.

Philip We’ve made a decision, and more details to come. We had our episode about this as well, and we have some people who are very excited about this decision, so we appreciate that encouragement.

Sean So: the conference.

Philip That’s right. We’re planning April of 2027 to have an All Are Yours conference, at our church in Marysville. More details to come, but the topic that we are right now hovering over like vultures is “unfettering the fullness of blessing.”

Sean Unfettering the fullness of blessing.

Philip That’s right. All Are Yours Conference 2027.

Sean There is some possibility that by the time a person is listening to this episode, there’s a little bit of a possibility that they could even go to allareyours.com —

Philip Boom.

Sean — and it’ll have at least tiny baby bits of that information related to the conference. So, more things to come to that website. But allareyours.com, and that’ll be up soon, Lord willing.

Philip There we go. And there are more little nuggets and gifts to come as well. So stay tuned.

Sean Yep. It’ll be glory.

Philip Yes, there you go. All right, that’s it.

Sean Later.

Philip Out.