Being the Church
Retirement: What are you retiring from? What are you retiring to?
After a life-time of experience, it’s time to simply “exhale”
*****
“Retirement is unbiblical,” she told me, her fist firmly pounding her desk.
Alice had been the company bookkeeper for about 50 years. She lived and breathed the daily routine, and now that she was approaching 80, she was reluctant to give it up. She believed that if she ever retired, she’d probably just pass away within a few months. Her work defined her.
Retirement conjures up a wide variety of emotions and ideas: anticipation, excitement, perpetual vacation, travel. But also anxiety, apprehension, and a loss of purpose.
The closest that the Bible comes to mentioning retirement is in Numbers 8:25:
"At the age of 50, they (the Levites) must retire from their regular service and work no longer. They may assist their brothers in performing their duties ...but they themselves must not do the work."
Work even in Paradise
But it’s worthwhile to go back even further, to the beginning of Genesis to determine that work isn’t the result of sin but it’s part of God’s creation order. In fact, our very first image of God “in the beginning” is a God of work; creating the universe, creating day and night, plants and animals, mankind.
“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested (ceased) from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” (Gen. 2:2)
After God created Adam, He put him to work: pick fruit, tend the garden, and give names to each living creature.
Work is part of the creation order. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” There is delight in work. Work is also worship. It is how we use our God-given talents each day in God’s Kingdom.
It is only once we understand the value and the role of work that we can understand the value and the role of retirement.
Is it true that, as that desk-pounding retiree declared, “retirement is unbiblical” …perhaps with the exception of the Levites who had to pack it in at age 50?
Time to reflect
The notion of retirement is a fairly recent phenomenon. The Canada Pension Plan was created in 1965, setting the retirement age at 65. Interestingly, the life expectancy back then was 66.8 years for men and 73 for women. That’s not much of a retirement. Today, someone at age 65 can expect to live to age 90; that’s another 25 years! We’re living longer and staying healthy longer.
What do we do with all that time? There’s the rub.
As you approach your retirement – probably somewhere between the age of 65 and 75 – consider taking a sabbatical; a few months off. Maybe even a year. Rest, relax, travel, visit the kids, do a few of the things that you've always wanted to do.
But before boredom sets in, before you spend endless hours in your deck chair or riding around on a golf cart, you need to spend some valuable time reflecting on your life, focusing on your areas of expertise, knowledge and wisdom. It’s also important to spend considerable time in prayer, realizing how God has led you throughout your life, and to be open to His leading during this next chapter in your life.
Pull out your latest resume or CV and reflect upon all that you have done: your various jobs – good and bad, your career challenges. Create a list of the areas of expertise that you have developed over the years. That could be a brief list or it could evolve into a novel.
Your history will shape your future. What you have done, and accomplished, and even failed at, will help you determine how you can share your experiences with others.
Time to share
You have learned a lot and done a lot in your life. Now it’s time to share it with others; especially teaching and training and mentoring the next generation.
When our oldest daughter began her new career as a teacher after graduating from college, she was clearly nervous. I told her that, after all of those years of education and training, she simply had to “learn to exhale.” Just breathe all of that knowledge over those children.
That’s what retirement can become for you. After decades of learning, doing and experiencing life, it is now time to simply “exhale”; breathe all of your knowledge over younger men and women as they shape their careers.
There is, however, something even more important to share with others. It’s your spiritual journey. It’s about how God has shaped you and molded you and walked with you throughout your life. Tell them your story. It’s invaluable.
As you mentor and train others, teach them your Christian perspective on leadership, on stewardship, on the right way to treat employees. Teach young men and women the importance of work/family balance. Remind them that their treasure is in heaven, not in the accumulation of wealth or toys or real estate.
Most of us can expect to live 20 to 30 years after we reach retirement age. That's an entire career! Prayerfully take a sabbatical to determine where God wants you to serve next and who you should be mentoring. Then approach this new chapter in your life with the same zeal that you had in your former career. Except that now you will have the benefit of wisdom and experience. More importantly, you will have the benefit of walking with God throughout your life, feeling His presence as you made those thousands of good and bad decisions.
It’s time to exhale.
A version of this article first appeared in “Faith Today” magazine.
News
Saturday Selections – Mar. 28, 2026
Some good news about euthanasia
Scotland has voted against euthanasia after looking at the horror happening in Canada.
1 in 5 Canadian employees works for the government and it's rising
And that doesn't include all the time that private sector employees have to spend. Meanwhile the self-employed are dropping. Correlation doesn't prove causation but...
Finnish parliamentarian convicted of hate speech for opposing homosexuality
...and the court ordered her book to be banned too.
The astonishing "engineering" involved in childbirth (10-minute read)
When a baby is born we think it is fearfully and wonderfully made, and that is certainly so. But we're just starting to learn about all that's going on in mom's body during childbirth... and it's amazing.
Some of this was a bit above me, but I enjoyed reading it even just getting the gist. What a gist! What a Creator!
Man most responsible for global population collapse has died
Paul Ehrlich passed away this week at the age of 93. He spent his life scaring people into thinking our planet was going to be overpopulated, and millions and billions would consequently starve. He did such an effective job that our world is now in great danger of a demographic collapse, with countries globally no longer having enough babies born to replace the adults who are dying.
Ehrlich is another example of how "Science" can be biased, and based on ideology, not reason or facts. Ehrlich was always wrong, but only people grounded in God's Word – where we learn that children are a blessing, not our doom – could have stood up against his hype and hysteria. Oh sure, eventually the research proved him wrong, but that took decades. Decades and decades of abortions, with millions dead. Only Christians, gifted with God's clear Word, could have known better. "Science" belittles the Bible, but the Bible was right and the world was wrong.
And now Canada's birthrate is so low we would be shrinking, if not for immigration. This is the legacy of a man who was arrogant enough to go right up against God, took the world with him, and was disastrously wrong.
Marx vs. Mises - the epic economic rap battle
This is the most informative 8-minute overview of economics you'll ever see. And the most entertaining. There might be some terms and concepts that blow past you, but if so, rewind, and then do some digging.
This isn't a Christian presentation, though it lines up well with God's Word... or at least far better than socialism.
Marx pitches socialism as all about equality, but it is about class warfare (against the 5th commandment), about fostering envy (10th commandment), about the use of force to take what God has entrusted to others (8th), and ultimately about the arrogance to think central planners can be omniscient (1st commandment), knowing what everyone should be doing.
Mises pitches individualism, which is often worshipped as a god too, but it doesn't have to be. We are part of groups – our country, the covenant Church, and our family, to name three, but we are individuals, too, and God has entrusted us individually with our own skills and resources, and tasked us, as individuals, to make the most of them (Matthew 25:14–30). And if we do not steal what others have, or covet it, then what results? The free market with its free exchanges. Adam Smith spoke of an "invisible hand" making things work as if by magic, getting fruits and milk and medicine to market without a central planner. As Christians we can recognize Whose hand that is – when we do economics the way God prescribes, the reason it works so well is just evidence of His love for us.
Today's Devotional
March 29 - Wholeheartedly living in the Spirit through faith and the goal of God’s creation
“He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”” - Genesis 22:2
Scripture reading: Genesis 22:1-14
God wants to use Abraham and Sarah as a second Adam and Eve and deal with the problem that their >
Today's Manna Podcast
Get your priorities straight
Serving #1160 of Manna, prepared by S. Harsevoort, is called "Get your priorities straight".
