Retirement

¹³ Do everything you can to help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way and see that they have everything they need. ¹⁴ Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives.   Titus 3:13,14

     As I get older, and look older, or maybe it's just because I am delivering grandchildren for people who I delivered, many people ask when I am going to retire. It is a reasonable question. After all, the house is paid for, the kids are all self-supporting, colleges and med school and seminary bills are all paid, and we have zero debt. In fact the retirement fund is pretty good. Why not just enjoy the rest of my life?
    Well, the obvious answer is that I am enjoying my life. I love delivering babies. I was sharing with someone the other day that with Halloween coming up, it is often like a homecoming for me where kids come to my door and I get to see all the children I've delivered and how they are growing up. It is fun!
    A new reason for not retiring came in the mail the other day and is reinforced in the above passage in Titus. The letter from Social Security says that if I retire at 62 I get $1900 dollars a month but if I wait till 65 I get $3900 a month. Now that isn't much but combined with our assets and retirement funds we would be OK. But let's say we tithed on $3900 a month - $390 a month to the Lord. I know we are not supposed to let the right hand know what the left hand is giving, etc. but as Paul would say, "let me be foolish for a second" (and because very few people read my blogs anyway), we currently give over 15 times that amount to ministries like our local church, Young life, rescue ministries, Honduras orphanages, gay restitution ministry, prostitute restoration ministries, jail ministries, hunger funds, Compassion Int., missionaries in multiple areas, and the list goes on. So what I would essentially be doing if I retired would be to say to the down-trodden,  " the $1000 I used to give you,  I am now going to use  to go visit Yosemite". I just heard an interesting message by Louie Giglio on what happens when we die, and he compares the difference between our earthly bodies and our heavenly bodies to the difference between the old earth and the new earth. It just makes much more sense to wait to see the new earth for free for all eternity than to use God's resources on ourselves to the detriment of the needy to see a fallen creation.
     You see, retirement - to go and spend your hard earned money on self, and to quit making income to bless others is a severe blow to these ministries and contrary to what the Bible says. There are multiple other reasons not to retire given in the Bible and this blog wasn't meant to be a treatise on the subject. It was just meant to present one new reason I hadn't thought of before.