Editorial April 6, 1987 Issue

Life in the hand of God

Michael D. Rissler

It's not a crime to reach the Biblical "threescore years and ten," any more than it's intrinsically wrong to be a teen-ager, an infant, or middle-aged. But if the whole subject of age is left to the vagaries of mortal existence, there are penalties aplenty attached to every stage of our lives.

Life is often burdened by too much of some things and too little of others. But it's not one's age that's the culprit, even though we're often tempted to use that as a handy peg on which to hang the whole thorny question "What in the world am I worth, to myself or anyone else?"

Worth. That is the always-overhanging issue in our lives. When I was in primary and secondary school, there was more than one time when a biology teacher, trying to enliven the class, would march out some statistics about how much the human body would be worth if its aggregate of minerals were weighed and then assigned the current market value. The figure—if I remember correctly—always came out to less than a couple of dollars. We all knew that statistic was a joke—a person is more than the body; and friendship, affection, and life are worth a lot more than that!

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