Starting to feel my age

People always feel younger on the inside than they look on the outside. I have lost count of the number of retired people who say they don't feel any different to when they were 40 or 50. For a long time I have said that I don't feel much different inside to how I was when I was in my 20s. My mental picture of myself is as a student who has only recently left university.

Until yesterday.

When I made this remark in casual conversation it struck me that it is no longer true. I don't think of myself as a young student. I think of myself as a mature adult. How mature? Well perhaps I still feel as if I was in my 40s instead of my true age (fifty and a half). But the young man who did all those silly things is not me any more. I still have a silly sense of humour and I still behave stupidly from time to time, but essentially I am more considerate and responsible than I ever was in my youth. And my relationship with Jesus has changed too. Less idealistic, more honest, less clear-cut, more of a struggle.

So is this a good thing? Yes and no. I am certainly more experienced in ministry and my capabilities as a preacher have developed. (Though I am several light years away from anything like good enough.) But maybe I need to hear the same message as the church in Ephesus - "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love." (Rev 2:4)

Lord, fan back into flame the embers of my first love for you and then help me to use all my years of development and experience to make the resultant blaze focused and useful.