Back in 2004, I was sitting at the small kitchen table in Mom’s retirement apartment when she put a cookie in front of me, along with a cup of Sanka coffee. “Here,” she said. “Have a napkin, too.”

She handed me a luncheon-size napkin with a cartoon and a pithy saying on it. Two old ladies were sitting together on a park bench, and one was saying to the other, “Old age isn’t for sissies.”

I chuckled and said, “Cute, Mom. Where’d you get these?”

“I bought ‘em myself, because that’s how it is.” She was 91 at the time and I was 58 – clearly a generation gap.

Now that I’m a dozen years closer to 91, I’m starting to appreciate Mom’s napkin philosophy. Some might say youth is wasted on the young, but the truth is, only the elderly have gained the courage and stamina to deal with old age.

Growing old gracefully is full of daunting challenges. Nothing but a lifetime in the School of Hard Knocks can prepare us to cope with the surprises that come as the years pile up.

The same is true in our Christian lives. God compares spiritual youth to physical babyhood. A diet of biblical milk is all we can digest, and anything else would be like trying to feed steak to a newborn.

Much later, as we accumulate more years of walking with God, we develop some spiritual teeth and begin tentatively sinking them into the harder parts of life. We learn to swallow small bits of biblical meat and receive nourishment enough to weather hardship.

Whether it’s physical or spiritual maturity, it takes time and experience to do life well. And when we’ve passed threescore and ten, living through the years after that requires spiritual muscle that can only come by eating the right diet… with or without a philosophical napkin.

“Do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.” (1 Corinthians 14:20)