In the United States the "graying of America" is a reference to growing numbers of senior citizens. An article in Parade Magazine stated that "by the year 2030, one out of every four Americans will be 60 or older." ^{Jess Gorkin, "Is America Ready for Its Elderly?" Parade Magazine, January 2, 1983, p. 12 .}

Humanity's concept of longevity ranges from being able to look back on a personal achievement with great pride on one hand, to a tenacious clinging to life in matter on the other. This concept demands more careful thought and prayer.

Christian Science helps us to view longevity through the lens of Truth rather than through the lens of the human mind. The activity of Truth redeems human consciousness from destructive beliefs of sin and disease, thereby broadening one's vision of life. Many have found that through the study and application of the teachings of Christian Science their lives have expanded and taken on deeper meaning. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy states, "... as a result of teaching Christian Science, ethics and temperance have received an impulse, health has been restored, and longevity increased." ^{Science and Health, p. 348.}

Shouldn't we recognize extended years as greater opportunities for continuing spiritual growth? Because of this higher purpose, longevity—when viewed as active, spiritual progress—becomes a moral consideration. Why moral? Because we pray to live each moment to our maximum potential for good. We refuse to consent to idleness, hopelessness, or uselessness. We consciously choose to express the life God bestows with its spiritually upspringing course, rather than submit to the intimidating mortal beliefs of merely prolonged human age. Every description of advancing age that would sink the individual deeper into materialism would have the ultimate effect of burying him. Do not the claims of mortality always threaten to lead to burial?

The law of God, eternal good, rescues us from these claims and sets us on upward wing. Science and Health contrasts Shakespeare's "burying" concepts of age with Life's ascending qualities: "Even Shakespeare's poetry pictures age as infancy, as helplessness and decadence, instead of assigning to man the everlasting grandeur and immortality of development, power, and prestige." ^{Ibid., p. 244.}

Let us assign to man development and unfoldment, not withdrawal! Power and dominion, not sinking, helpless submission! Prestige and spiritual renewal, not shrinking identity! Pure manhood is clothed in "everlasting grandeur and immortality," awe-inspiring magnificence, the radiance of God as Soul. As we understand more of God's immortal child, we can express more of the dignity and harmony of Life that transcend what mortal mind may be suggesting via the mirror and the mortal body.

Had Christ Jesus identified his being with the lifeless evidence of his body while it was buried in the tomb, he could never have demonstrated the eternal newness of Life that his resurrection exemplifies for us. We love the Master for all that he taught and demonstrated of the Christ, including his proof of the continuity of man's life in God. He proved the absolute unreality of life, or death, in matter. Remember his words "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." ^{John 10:10.}

It is important to perceive the depth of this spiritual law—this law of abundant life—and to apply it in our experience. Abundant health, abundant harmony, perfect faculties, belong to man, for Life is Soul. Not physical energy but spiritual vitality and strength constitute the life that God bestows, for Life is Spirit. God's children manifest life with integrity—life unimpaired, sound, immutable; for the divine Life that man reflects is Truth. By being divine Love, God imparts the law for living, for Life is Love. The divine Life that man reflects includes God's outlined, precise, and intelligent provision for the completeness of its expression, for Life is Mind. Living is divinely structured and in order, for Life is Principle.

We may indeed have periods when we pause to reflect on our years in this earthly experience; and our thoughts may linger—happily or regretfully—on some of the scenes. If we find ourselves viewing the senior years with apprehension, Mrs. Eddy offers us a wonderfully comforting message: "To preserve a long course of years still and uniform, amid the uniform darkness of storm and cloud and tempest, requires strength from above,—deep draughts from the fount of divine Love.... The fleeting freshness of youth, however, is not the evergreen of Soul; the coloring glory of perpetual bloom; the spiritual glow and grandeur of a consecrated life wherein dwelleth peace, sacred and sincere in trial or in triumph." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. ix-x.} What a rebuke to age beliefs!

"A consecrated life"! Is not consecration the sweet impulse for one's so-called senior (as well as junior) years, embracing the conviction that man's life purpose as God's witness is ever unfolding? God never retires man into dimness but demands that man's life be a continuous bright and shining light expressing Him. Whether our age is twenty-eight or eighty-eight, our Father-Mother God empowers us as His eternal ideas to glorify Him, to manifest His qualities, to be the very evidence that He exists.

Increasing longevity need not be viewed, then, as merely a prolongation of life in matter, but as a progressive moral demonstration on the human scene. We can come to see that our lives truly have the dignity and destiny of eternal sonship. As the loved of divine Love, we are exempt from the claims of aging, because in the ageless fount of Love, substance does not deteriorate, function is not depleted, identity cannot be rendered useless.

God blesses us with the joy of Life. If we are loving Life, we welcome the progress that can attend advancing years. We challenge mortal mind's pretense that age is synonymous with ugliness and gloom. We have divine authority to address intimidating age beliefs with the same Christly conviction and dominion that Jesus showed when he addressed the threats of Pontius Pilate. He declared, "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above." ^{John 19:11.} As we use our growing understanding of the newness of life in God, we discover ever-fresh opportunities to serve Him.

Our Father-Mother God leads us, moment by moment.