Aging With Grace
Aging With Grace
Whatever season of life you're in, God has equipped you to flourish - to live in the transforming power and beauty of his grace. As we age, we can easily lose sight of this message as cultural ideals glorifying youth take center stage.
In this book, Sharon W. Betters and Susan Hunt offer present-day and biblical examples of women who rediscovered gospel-rooted joy later in their lives. Equipped with a biblical view of aging, Aging with Grace will help you encounter afresh the gospel that "is big enough, good enough, and powerful enough to make every season of life significant and glorious."
I want to age gracefully so I ordered Aging with Grace, flourishing in an anti-aging culture, (AwG) on the basis of the title and publisher (Crossways) without even reading the blurb. So, I was surprised on starting to read AwG to release I was not the intended audience! AwG is written specifically by women for women, as such this review is written in conjunction with my wife Beth.
We were both impressed with AwG as it combines solid exegesis with honest reflections about the challenges and joys of aging gracefully. The structure is beautiful in its simplicity with each chapter engaging with a specific piece of Scripture and women’s lives experience of aging.
In terms of weaknesses
• There is real richness in this book for both men and women so the desire to speak to women is a barrier to men engaging with this important topic.
• As you would expect from Crossways the book is evangelical is tone (which depending on your tradition will be more or less comfortable). It engaged with commentaries and Reformed theology (e.g. the Westminster Confession made regular appearances) but it would have been nice for the authors to engage with some of the other literature around aging and faith.
• The exegesis of Biblical women was good, even if at times it included extrapolation (e.g. saying Elizabeth (mother of John the Baptist) experienced menopause).
• It would have been great to see the authors wrestle with the account of Sari/Sarah as all the Biblical women they engaged with were quite positive.
So, should you read and or purchase a copy of AwG? We agree, this is a critical and wonderful resource for women particularly those wrestling with Titus 2 and the role of older women in teaching younger women. Likewise, for people interested and involved in senior’s ministry, irrespective of gender will benefit from the richness of AwG. As previously mentioned AwG’s is written specifically for women so that is a barrier for male readers which is unfortunate given the richness of the text and specifically over half the Biblical texts were not specifically about women.
