The Best is Yet to Be - January 4, 2023

My An Arkie's Faith column from the January 4, 2023, issue of The Polk County Pulse.

John sat at the piano in his bedroom. Pressing the record button on his cassette recorder, he started to play. After playing several measures, he began to sing. "Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be. When our time has come, we will be as one. God bless our love. God bless our love."

John and his wife appreciated the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. One morning, she suggested he write a song using Robert Browning's poetry as a stimulus. That afternoon, John was watching TV when an old movie came on about a baseball player. In the film, the baseball player's girlfriend sends him a poem by Robert Browning. The poem was "Rabbi Ben Ezra," which opens with the lines, "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made."

John was struck by the coincidence and sat down to write. He penned a simple love song with the final verse: "Grow old along with me. Whatever fate decrees. We will see it through, for our love is true. God bless our love. God bless our love." He sat down at his piano and made a simple cassette recording.

John's simple love song was written for his wife and featured religion, romance, and commitment. Even though the only recording he made was that simple cassette on that November day in 1980, the song Grow Old with Me has become well known and is a popular wedding song. It is a very romantic song that's not about passion but about caring and commitment. When I made a CD album of love songs to give to guests at my daughter's wedding, I included John's home recording of Grow Old With Me.

John planned to record Grow Old with Me in the studio for his next album. He envisioned the song as a standard that they would play in church when a couple gets married, lushly arranged with horns and strings. But John wouldn't get the chance to record Grow Old with Me in the studio. His lyrics, "Spending our lives together. Man and wife together. World without end," would not be fulfilled.

I still remember hearing the news on that cold December day in 1980. Former Beatle John Lennon was shot to death late last night outside his luxury apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, police said. Authorities said Lennon, 40, was rushed in a police car to Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving. I, along with millions of fans worldwide, was in shock. John's death was less than a month after writing Grow Old With Me. 

John wrote many love songs in the forty years he lived on this earth. My favorite words he wrote are "love is real, real is love. Love is feeling, feeling love. Love is wanting to be loved." Another favorite love poem he wrote says, "From this moment on, I know exactly where my life will go. Seems that all I really was doing was waiting for love."

We all want to be loved, but not all of us find love. The Bible is God's love letter to us, and the greatest love poem in the Bible is John 3:16,17 (NKJV) "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."

"God so loved the world." What beautiful words. Notice that it is the whole world that God loves, not a single nation or race. Not just one denomination. Not just the "good" people, not just the people who love God back. He loves the lovable and the unlovable, The popular and the unpopular. He loves those who love Him and those who never think of Him.

Some people find it hard to accept that God freely gives His love and grace. They prefer to think that God only loves the same people they love and that God hates the people they despise. They want to place limits on God's love.

To put it bluntly, these people are wrong. God loves the world, including those who are just like us and those different from us. If Jesus didn't come into the world to condemn people, why should we? Jesus came to lift people up, not to put them down. Jesus didn't come to condemn us; Jesus came to offer us eternal life. We should follow His example.

Pastor Ty Gibson wrote, "I undergo the ultimate shift consciousness when I cease perceiving God as an authority figure who wants control and begin perceiving God as a husbandly figure who wants mutual love. Love alone is the agent God uses to expel sin from the heart."

In Romans 8:37-39 (NCV), we find these beautiful words. "But in all these things we are completely victorious through God who showed his love for us. Yes, I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruling spirits, nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us, nothing below us, nor anything else in the whole world will ever be able to separate us from the Love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

No matter what circumstance you find yourself in, no one can separate you from God's love for you. God wants you to know Him personally. He wants to love you and be loved by you for eternity. God says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you." Jeremiah 31:3 (HCSB)

Gentle Reader, Jesus says to you, "I have loved you as the Father has loved me. Now continue in my love." John 15:9 (ERV) In Hebrews 13:5 (NKJV), He tells you, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." And He promises that "I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." John 14:3 (NKJV) It is as if Jesus is saying to us: "Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be. When our time has come, we will be as one. God bless our love."