Today I attended the monthly Age Concern meeting at the Kaitaia Baptist Hall with Lonneke Botello at 10.00am.

She is a clinical nutritionist and spoke on the theme:

“HOW TO MAINTAIN  GOOD BONE HEALTH”.

“Trying new things in South Dunedin,” is the article called. (RISE: Issue 26 – March 2014, page 23)

“We are really failing our young people. As a community, we need to take a different, more coordinated and collaborate approach,” the reader is told in the middle of the writing.

“We are really failing our young people.”

On the same page we are also told that the attendance at school is not not as it should be, that young people commit crimes, that they use alcohol and drugs.

Our greatest failure is that we don’t approach our young people with the commandments  of the Bible.

VIRTUE CHRISTIAN CENTRE: Young People Washing Cars

An expert in the Jewish Law asked the Lord Jesus Christ, “‘Teacher, what is the most important commandment in the Law?'”

And what did the Lord Jesus Christ answer?

“Love the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind. This is the first and most important commandment. The second most important commandment is like this one. And this is, ‘Love others as much as you love yourself.’ All the Law of Moses and the Books of the Prophets are based on these two commandments.” (New Testament in Contemporary English, CEV)

We don’t tell the young people about the commandments of the Bible because we have not been told what God commands of us.

“Trying new things …”

Do you know the hymn “Tell me the old, old story?”

Here is the refrain:

“Tell me the old, old story,

tell me the old, old story,

tell me the old,old story,

Of Jesus and His love.”

“God sets the lonely in families,” we read in the book called Psalms.

From a sermon I heard many, many years ago I remember that the preacher said that we start off  alone. When we get married, we become two. Then the children are being born and it does not matter how many children we have, all of them leave the home eventually. We are two again. Then the husband or the wife dies and there is only one person left.

“LONELINESS”

“Tens of thousands of older New Zealanders are very, very lonely,” it says on the card I picked up today at the local Age Concern office.

A lady from Age Concern Napier “says social isolation – or lack of community connection – is the single most serious issue facing older people.” (RISE: Issue 26 – March 2014)

On the card from the local Age Concern office it says also, “We’re here to help when it feels like nobody cares.”

I don’t need to tell you that a home, a family, consists of a Father, a Mother and children.

But I want to tell you that there is also a church family.

Whether I want to or not, but I am one of the “older people”, but I belong to a church family. I am not only not  lacking community connection, but I am also connected to the Living God. I am born again.

Please read this promise from the THE BOOK OF BOOKS:

“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you.

The Lord cares!