This morning I realized a universal truth for women: under-eye concealer only goes so far.
I’ve tried a lot of beauty products over the last few years to slow the visible process of aging, but no matter what concoction I slather on my face every night or sponge around my eyes in the morning, the tiny crevices still spread and deepen. It used to alarm me, these lines and wrinkles. Without my permission, they tell others what I can no longer hide: I’m getting older. I can’t pass for twenty-five or even thirty-five anymore. I’m rushing towards middle age, and you can tell.
Everywhere I look—commercials, ads, Instagram posts—I get the message that this process of aging is something to be overcome, beaten, conquered. If I’m not actively trying to shut down this process, I must be failing my body. When the crow’s feet first began to surface, I panicked and planned a counterattack. But no matter how much money I plunk down on a beauty counter, no product on this planet will stop the process of movement toward death.
It’s Eden’s curse. We’re all slowly dying.
And we can’t make it stop.
Sometimes I don’t recognize the girl in the mirror with the lines on her face and the silvery strands springing from her scalp, but as I’ve reflected on the slow vanishing of my physical youth, I’ve watched something else slowly diminish: my spiritual youth. I can’t disentangle the two, really. Alongside the slow fade of physical youth is a similar, bittersweet release of my young years in Christ.
Spiritual maturity grows in long years of following Jesus. Day in, day out, ordinary faithfulness to Him. Over time, the edges of immaturity are sanded down by the cumulative effects of reading the Word, of laboring in prayer, of loving the Lord in community with other believers. The Lord keeps His promise to finish what He started in us, but He never promised to do it overnight. He promised to make us more into the image of Christ and He does it, bit by bit, from one degree of glory to the next (see Rom. 8:29, 2 Cor. 3:18).
As we grow in godliness, we’ll see certain areas of sin lose their grip on our hearts. It happens over time—incrementally, I’ve noticed. A slow scraping away of selfishness and pride, layer by layer until we start looking more like Jesus and less like us. We’re slowly decreasing, He’s slowly increasing—this is not a sprint but a lifelong race of becoming less like us and more like Him. We see better now than we did ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty. Usually, victory in one area turns our eyes to other blind spots so we can begin killing those sins, too. But it’s that daily, tandem sin-killing and Jesus-seeking that moves us from one degree of glory to another. From seed to blossom. From infant to adult. From zeal without wisdom to zeal beautifully tangled up with wisdom.
It’s a sloughing-off of the old and settling in more and more into the new. While our bodies wear down a little more each day with signs of age, our spirits are renewed day by day. We’re becoming less like the broken down, sin-laden old versions of us and more like the Spirit-filled new versions of us. As we grow in age, our bodies might be marked by wrinkles and gray hair, arthritis and creaking knees, back pain and waning vision. But as we grow in the faith, our hearts are marked by faithfulness, love, kindness, self-control, joy, peace.
Paul tells us to be encouraged by the inner work that’s happening, even as our bodies wear down: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). That renewal happens inwardly, not outwardly. Crow’s feet and knee pain might tell you that your body is wasting away, but inwardly the Spirit is still working to make you more like Jesus. As you grow up in bodily age, you can be growing up in faith. One kind of growth results in a diminished frame; the other results in imaging Jesus more than you did when your skin was smooth and your knees could tackle a flight of stairs without complaint. What a trade-off! If the passing of youth is a necessary loss to walk the long path of growth in godliness, I can live with that. I can age with that.
The benefits of growth and spiritual maturity far outweigh that of any investment in maintaining an appearance of physical youth. We’ll have new bodies in heaven free from the repercussions of Eden’s curse. What matters now is pressing forward in faithfulness to Christ. We can grow older with confidence that He will finish what He has started in our hearts.
This morning, I followed my normal make-up routine. I sponged concealer around my eyes and stood back from the mirror. Dabbed the places where the creases grabbed too much makeup. And I smiled a little. My skin definitely bears the signs of early aging, but I don’t mind it so much. I don’t have the skin of a twenty-five-year-old. But I don’t have the same spiritual state as my twenty-five-year-old self because the Lord is as faithful to sanctify me as He was kind to save me. He has been scraping away those layers of selfishness and pride—and praise Him—He’ll keep at it until I see Him face-to-face. The physical signs of aging can remind me that He is making me new.
Your body might bear the marks of age, but if you are in Christ, your heart bears the marks of Jesus’ redemptive work. And as you grow in Him, don’t lose heart. Your body is getting older, but He is making you new.
Your body might bear the marks of age, but if you are in Christ, your heart bears the marks of Jesus’ redemptive work. And as you grow in Him, don’t lose heart. Your body is getting older, but He is making you new. Share on XListen to this post:
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Photo by Eli DeFaria on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.