Steven Gerrard, Yeats, Bloomberg and Spurgeon!

So after years of watching his heroics inspire and rescue Liverpool countless times, the inimitable Steven Gerrard is finally riding off into the sunset.  Oddly, for someone who probably earns more in a month (or a week!) than what 99% of us will earn in a year, the abiding feeling is one of... almost pity.

Gerrard's incandescent talent lit up the Liverpool team for years, but he never really came close to winning the league, at least until last season, when his own slip so unjustly denied him the chance to lift that trophy.  His final season this year was even more tragic.  Losing his place in the first eleven.  Coming on as a substitute against the auld enemy Manchester United and getting sent off within seconds.  Losing 3-1 at Anfield to Crystal Palace, in his final game at home, in front of his city's fans.  Then the ignominy of losing 6-1 (!) in his final game for the club.  Heck, after that I even went to play as Steven Gerrard on the Xbox, and I also lost :P

Sometimes life can feel that way.  Unfair.  That we're not getting what our talent or effort deserves.  Even more galling is when someone less skilled, less hardworking, or less experienced, seems to get what we think we deserve.  It's even possible to get upset with people who really are smarter or better, and who deserve more success.  My kids sometimes come back from school and tell me how unfair it is that some of their classmates seem to achieve amazing results while putting in less effort.

But it can be a good thing for the young to feel some degree of dissatisfaction.  It can be a spur to striving harder, working smarter, and making changes.  It's not so easy when we get older.  We're less agile, more set in our ways, and generally speaking, as the poet William Yeats once wrote, "This is no country for old men".  Steven Gerrard, for all his loyalty and contributions to the club, will be bade farewell with some affection, but if we're honest, little desire for him to actually stay on.  And I've seen at work that the older you are, the bigger the target on your back when it comes to redundancy, or cold storage.

Bloomberg recently published an article about the rising crime rate among the elderly.  When UK police arrested the suspects for a 10m pound theft of cash and gems from a heavily secured vault, the youngest suspect was 42, and the oldest 74.  According to the article, at the preliminary hearing, the 74 year old said he couldn't understand the questions because he was hard of hearing.  In Germany, the "Grandpa Gang", comprising 3 men in their 60s and 70s were convicted of robbing than 1M euros from 12 banks.  Loneliness and poverty are suggested as two major factors in this trend.

How about me?  I'll be 41 in two weeks, still reasonably young by work standards I suppose.  But knowing that the end is nearer than the beginning, how should I live?  I am immensely grateful for my family, my career and my ministry.  I have more than I deserve.  I still work for more of course.  To be a better husband, a better father, a better servant and a better leader.  I still dream about getting nice things, going for holidays with my wife and seeing my children and my ministry prosper.

How will I handle inevitable change?  Can I stomach it when my children grow up and need me less, as I'm already starting to see?  Can I endure it (as Steven Gerrard has had to do!) when favour in the workplace diminishes, as it will one day for all of us, no matter whether we have been successful or merely mediocre?

Or what if the end is nearer than I think?  What if I am enjoying success in all fields, growing in wealth, influence and favour - and then God tells me to lay it down?  Am I ready to say, "Here I am Lord, send me!  All my store comes from your hand, and is all yours."

I recently heard a Charles Spurgeon quote, which says, "The best moment of a Christian's life is his last one, because it is the one that is nearest heaven.  And then it is that he begins to strike the keynote of the song which he shall sing to all eternity."

I think Spurgeon's quote applies not only at the end, but in every "now".  My last moment is, as each second passes in the present, that very moment.  But each passing moment only becomes better if I tune that keynote more sweetly, so that I may sing it to all eternity.  Quite often, it requires redoubling my current effort so that I may practise and perfect that note.  But other times it will require courageously walking away from the things and circumstances that are keeping me from striking that keynote, because I'm practising the wrong song!

So, to the hero of Istanbul, Cardiff, and stadia all over England and Europe - Stevie Gerrard, and to all my friends, my prayer is that we may find the will, the courage and persistence, to keep striving for that pure and glorious keynote which God has called us to sing.

For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.

O Lord our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee a house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own.

I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness.  As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart I have willingly offered all these things; and now I have seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly to thee.

1 Chronicles 29:15-17