A legacy of praise

 5:03 p.m. Today's project was to give a facial and color consultation to an old friend, Tammie, whom I met through Harvest Christian Fellowship's women's ministry. Linda Thomson, Bonnie Lange and I were setting up our first "Willing Hearts, Willing Hands" home arts classes back in 1983 when Tammie was asked to teach a scrapbooking class. Even though we are friends through Facebook currently, we hadn't seen one another in person for years until the day of Steve's memorial, very briefly with a crowd of  friends between us in the spacious Harvest foyer. We greeted one another very happily in my doorway. She doesn't seem to have changed much, if at all.

My friend and I aren't old at 53 and 61, but, like the cars pictured above, we're "vintage!"  Psalm 71: 15-18

tells us that God is with us through all stages of life, giving us reason to hope, and that it is a joy and comfort to testify of Him.

But I will hope continually,
And will praise You yet more and
  more.
My mouth shall tell of Your
  righteousness
And Your salvation all the day,
For I do not know their limits.

I will go in the strength of the 
  Lord GOD;
I will make mention of Your 
  righteousness, of Yours only.


O God, You have taught me from
  my youth; and to this day I declare Your
  wondrous works.

Here we see the Psalmist reflecting on past experience as a reason to praise; current knowledge of God whose power and willingness to save have no limits; and future hope and determination to raise God for His righteousness. With that hope, the writer--and we--can go in the strength of the Lord God, in full confidence, mentioning God's incomparable righteousness to all we meet.

At a Bible study this evening, we took up II Corinthians 4. Hear verse 7:

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels [us], that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

The dying of the Lord Jesus for our sins, and His resurrected life, is to be manifested in us. This is what we, the Church, have to share!

The Psalmist continues, v. 18:

Now also when I am old and
  grayheaded,
O God, do not forsake me,
Until I declare Your strength to
  this generation,
Your power to everyone who is to 
  come.

Lord, as we age, may we leave a legacy of faith and praise!