I realize that the natural tendency in our society is to be friends with people in the same age group as us. Right from childhood, we are whisked away to concentration camps (sometimes called boarding schools) and our major interaction comes from kids our age. The system deliberately puts us together, even at higher levels of training. In fact, most churches have a special section for children called Sunday School, then they graduate to the teens church before joining the adult church (at which point, they spell adult church as B-O-R-I-N-G!). In my church even, there’s a choir with majorly elderly people and another with young people (You can guess which of the choirs I belong to).

This is not necessarily bad and I know there are some advantages that comes with interacting with peers, but I think this is leaving the world void of men and women. What we have now are overgrown boys and girls. Our parents had closer interactions with the generation before them. Then, the word ‘apprenticeship’ really meant that. Little boys/girls and younger men/women learned (consciously and subconsciously) what it meant to be fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, professionals. They learned handwork by closely watching their Masters. I feel that our parents came in to adulthood earlier than we do. We grew up memorizing the fatality combination for Subzero in Mortal Kombat and our toys have only gotten more technologically advanced, but toys all the same…a fun-seeking generation.

The Case for Wisdom. Experience may be the best teacher, but life is too short to experience it all. Besides, some experiences have very costly price tags. Hence, the need for models. Not the ones Victoria has kept secret all this while. No, the real models. Godly models…professional models…family models…business models, generally speaking – gray-haired models. There’s wisdom in gray hair. Young folks have to deliberately seek this wisdom and grow up already! When people tell me to get out of my comfort zone, that’s what I think of. Not jumping off a plane (which is still out of my comfort zone).

Titus 2: Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives.

I have prayed a lot with this verse. A younger woman under such ‘good model’ and training is the most attractive person alive. This is just a facet. I’ll argue that it holds true for the younger men needing models of goodness. Same with career paths. My personal decision is to get out of my comfort zone and make more friends older than I am. I do realize that not all elderly people are models of goodness though, so I’m trusting God for direction.