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    Still Praying After All These Years: Meditations for Later Life
    Still Praying After All These Years: Meditations for Later Life
    Still Praying After All These Years: Meditations for Later Life
    Ebook178 pages1 hour

    Still Praying After All These Years: Meditations for Later Life

    By Susan Carol Scott

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    About this ebook

    People in the later years of life face many changes, many that are not of their own choosing. Still Praying After All These Years offers 52 reassuring meditations that encourage readers to realize that their lives still have meaning and that aging holds opportunities for spiritual growth.

    Each meditation begins with a concern, question, or insight expressed in the author's conversations with people ages 75-100. In the Perspectives section, the author provides psychological and theological insights, welcoming doubt, mystery, and the many emotions that accompany aging. Next, she invites readers to practice their faith by reflecting on some aspect of their life or undertaking an action. A brief prayer ends each meditation, opening readers to a deeper relationship with God.

    This book will help older readers feel heartened and less alone as they hear about others who have walked a similar path. Readers who are caregivers will be moved to empathize with the spiritual, emotional, and other challenges their loved one faces. For readers who minister with the elderly, this resource will increase their capacity to extend empathy and compassion to individuals and groups of frail elderly people.

    As they ponder these meditations, readers of any age will be encouraged to savor the life God has given them in a fresh, new way.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUpper Room Books
    Release dateAug 1, 2019
    ISBN9780835818889
    Still Praying After All These Years: Meditations for Later Life
    Author

    Susan Carol Scott

    Susan Carol Scott is self-employed in private practice as a spiritual director, retreat leader, and supply preacher. She holds a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. An ordained clergyperson in the United Church of Christ, Scott is authorized by her judicatory for specialized ministry as a healthcare chaplain and spiritual director.

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      Book preview

      Still Praying After All These Years - Susan Carol Scott

      Wherever We Go

      In making a new beginning, it relaxes me to remember that wherever I go, God is there.

      —Sarah, age 82

      Passage

      Where can I go from your spirit?

      Or where can I flee from your presence?

      If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

      if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

      If I take the wings of the morning

      and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

      even there your hand shall lead me,

      and your right hand shall hold me fast.

      —Psalm 139:7-10

      Perspective

      Some of us grew up with spy-in-the-sky ideas of God given to us by adults anxious to curb our less civilized behavior. Perhaps those adults hoped an image of a judgmental, all-seeing God would keep us in line until we developed more inner control. Thinking of God this way can make it hard to relax in God’s presence. But the idea of God being wherever we are can be relaxing if we understand God’s being everywhere as a sign of loving care.

      Having been on earth a while, we’ve likely had brief glimpses of God’s presence in a variety of physical and emotional locations, familiar and uncharted. Those glimpses may come by way of others’ care or by discovering an unexpected provision for our need. Sometimes, there is simply a deep sense of being led, being one with divine energy, or being held fast in the web of life. In such instances, God is less of a spy-in-the-sky and more of a versatile artist, creating ever-changing ways of making God’s holy presence known to us.

      Practice

      Make a day of noticing some ways God’s Spirit is present with both you and others.

      Prayer

      Holy One, open my eyes to see you, my ears to hear you, and my heart to sense your presence in whatever form you come to me this day.

      Expecting Small Miracles

      It’s a mystery to me why things are happening–why they sometimes go the opposite of what I expect. What brings me light in darkness is a small miracle. That’s when I don’t expect something good to happen and then it does.

      —William, age 84

      Passage

      Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

      —Hebrews 11:1

      Perspective

      William realizes that having expectations does not give him control over what actually happens in his life. This awareness leads him to acknowledge the presence of mystery and wonder anew why things happen as they do.

      D. W. Winnicott, a child development theorist, suggests that a prerequisite for a dependent child’s growth is parental nurture that is good enough. He suggests that it’s not through having his or her needs perfectly met but through reliable care that a child matures. Through good enough parenting, a child learns to expect certain outcomes based on past experiences of how his or her parents behaved. In time the child learns that its expectations may exceed his or her actual capacity to control what happens.

      A child often learns this reality through separations, when access to the parents’ presence is temporarily lost, and the child is left with a substitute caregiver. Over numerous experiences of such separations the child learns object constancy—the conviction of things not seen. The child develops a faith that his or her parents continue to exist and care even though they are out of sight. This is how all of us develop both a sense of self as separate from our parents as well as a basic faith in life’s goodness, even when reality frustrates our desires.¹

      In this later season of life, our hopes and expectations are sometimes disappointed. At such times, our faith in life’s goodness may be shaken. At other times, expecting nothing or anticipating the worst, we are pleasantly surprised by the small miracles that happen to meet our needs. While the world God created isn’t entirely our personal oyster, small miracles remind us that God often provides us with enough to survive and, sometimes, with enough to thrive.

      Practice

      Imagine that a small miracle is seeking you out. When it finds you, give

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