From Seven to Eighties

“This will only last for twenty-five minutes” said the technician last Friday, as if that would comfort me.  I was about to endure my first nuclear stress test, and I had not slept much the night before.  In addition, I had not been allowed to eat for twelve hours.  Part of me was proud that I had made it into my eighties before needing this, and part of me was as nervous as I was when I was seven years old and waiting to have my tonsils removed.  The scan itself was not at all bad.  In fact, lying on my back, on the table, for twenty-five minutes was worse on my lower back, than any other discomfort, physical or emotional.  Less than forty-eight hours earlier, in reading my one-Bible-chapter-per-day, with my online Bible reading group, I had read, from Isaiah 46:4, “Even to your old age, I am He and even to gray hairs I will carry you.”  I will not know the results of this test until after this Manna is posted on Monday morning, but it doesn’t really matter – Surgery? Medication? Fitness program? Diet restrictions? Life-style changes?  The same God who carried me though a seven-year-old tonsillectomy, has promised to carry me through gray-headed medical issues. Bill Gaither wrote it – “The longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.”