Our perspective today is informed by the reality that resurrection awaits God’s children. According to God’s Word, the best is yet to be. We who love Jesus do not pass our physical and mental peak in this life, nor do we reach it. Our peak, or its beginning, will come in the resurrection, not before (Revelation 21-22):

Understanding that our peak doesn’t come in this life should radically change our view of deteriorating health, which otherwise would produce discouragement, regret, anger, envy, and resentment. Elderly people could envy and resent the young for what they can do. People handicapped from birth could envy and resent others for what they can do. But when the elderly and handicapped recognize that their experiences on the New Earth will be far better than the best anyone else is experiencing here and now, it brings anticipation, contentment, consolation, and the ability to fully rejoice in the activities of the young and healthy, without envy or regret.

People without Christ can only look back to when they were at their best, never to regain it. Memories are all they have, and even those memories fade. But elderly or bedridden Christians don’t look back to the peak of their prowess. They look forward to it.

When we Christians sit in wheelchairs or lie in beds or feel our bodies shutting down, let’s remind ourselves, “I haven’t passed my peak. I haven’t yet come close to it. The strongest and healthiest I’ve ever felt is a faint suggestion of what I’ll be in my resurrected body on the New Earth.”

This isn’t wishful thinking. This is the explicit promise of God. It is as true as John 3:16 and everything else the Bible tells us.

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