Growing old, as my mother once said, isn’t for the faint of heart. And as I approach my 70th birthday, I can’t decide whether I’m too old to be crippled or too crippled to be old. 🙂 Either way, the combination doesn’t appeal to me.

At the end of 2020, I fractured my back for the third time. The other two times, I’d recovered fairly quickly, and even enjoyed day trips into Boston until September of 2019. In 2020, an acute bout with anemia and malnutrition left me unable (and frankly, uninterested) in going to Boston, but I looked forward to taking my new, easier to drive power wheelchair into the city. I imagined jetting up the Rose Kennedy Greenway or tooling down Boyleston Street without the struggle that my previous chair caused. Sadly however, trouble with Personal Care Attendants just as my back fracture was healing kept me in bed much longer than I would have otherwise stayed down. As a result, my back muscles have become weak, and driving is sometimes painful.

At this point, I don’t see myself even returning to church (although John and I remain members in good standing and stay accountable through an elder who comes each Friday to lead us in Bible Study). Those cherished excursions to Boston are therefore entirely out of the question! After all, fellowship is infinitely more important than sitting on Boston Common watching tourists or going to the North End for cannolis. Slowly, I’ve accepted that I may never see Boston again.

And it’s all right.

It’s all right because Boston doesn’t offer anything but temporal enjoyment. I eventually alwavs had to return to our little apartment, where the food was good without being special and life didn’t vary all that much. I’d frequently experience a sense of let down once we arrived home, and I’d immediately begin thinking about the next trip. If I could go back to Boston tomorrow, I’d return home feeling the same sense of let down, longing to go back “just one more time.”

No earthly pleasure lasts. Even the most beautiful marriage will eventually draw to a close when one of the spouses dies. Although we have every reason to enjoy the temporal blessings God gives to us, we must never hold those blessings too tightly, assuming that we’re entitled to enjoy them indefinitely. James, the half-brother of our Lord, made that fact clear in his epistle:

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” ¹⁴ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” ¹⁶ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil ~~James 4:13-16 (NASB95)

Our earthly lives are just vapors that will vanish. We enjoy many wonderful blessings while we’re here — blessings that testify of God’s goodness and generosity. But when we mistake those blessings as permanent fixtures, we ultimately forget that the delights of this life can’t go on forever. As much as I wish I could drive my power chair along the Esplanade or celebrate one more wedding anniversary at that French restaurant overlooking Boston Harbor, I understand that those blessings belong to a younger generation now. And after a season, that generation will age, in turn making room for the generations that will follow them and then vanish. We can thank the Lord for graciously allowing us to enjoy temporal blessings, as long as we let Him take them away when He sees fit.

And when He does take them away, we can look forward to something far more wonderful. To those He has saved by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, He promises an eternity of enjoying His physical presence, where we will forever feast on His glory.

¹⁰ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, ¹¹ having the glory of God. Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper. ¹² It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. ¹³ There were three gates on the east and three gates on the north and three gates on the south and three gates on the west. ¹⁴ And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

¹⁵ The one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city, and its gates and its wall. ¹⁶ The city is laid out as a square, and its length is as great as the width; and he measured the city with the rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal. ¹⁷ And he measured its wall, seventy-two yards, according to human measurements, which are also angelic measurements. ¹⁸ The material of the wall was jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. ¹⁹ The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation stone was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; ²⁰ the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst. ²¹ And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the gates was a single pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

²² I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. ²³ And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. ²⁴ The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. ²⁵ In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; ²⁶ and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; ²⁷ and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. ~~Revelation 21:10-27 (NASB95)

As I read this passage, Boston kind of loses its luster.