The sunshine beat on our backs as we slapped the paint down. The rubbery exterior coating was shining in the rising sun. It was already getting hot, and the steam rose over the river behind us.
I was working as a summer employee for a painting company and was on a project during August in a condominium subdivision. The project involved all the exterior wooden decks with a double coating of rubbery white wood paint.

As we painted one older lady’s deck that morning, we chatted about the various sports games the night before, and before we knew it, we had finished the first coat. As I stood up to admire our handiwork, I heard the glass door slide open behind me, and I turned to greet the owner.

An angry lady
What I saw was not quite what I expected. An elderly lady was shaking, and quite livid. She asked me in a dangerously quiet voice: “Who are you and what are you doing to my deck?”

“Pardon me, ma’am,” I said, not believing my ears. “We’re the painters and we’re painting all the decks in the condo park.”

She was incredibly upset and obviously did not know beforehand that her wooden deck was to be painted like all the others. I attempted to calm the lady down, and I sent someone to inform our employer of the situation. It turned out that our employer had given us the wrong number to paint, but it was too late now, and the lady had a quickly drying painted deck before her.

I offered to repair the damage we had done and throw in several coats of wood treatment as well. She was still angry and so she shut the door in our faces and we were left with the mistake. It took all week to get the paint off the deck, and get the free wood treatment into the cleaned deck, but we persevered until we had done what we had said.

Anger turns to friendship
During the week of cleaning the mistake up, the lady had started coming out to watch us and I struck up a conversation. She got to telling stories of her past as we fixed the deck and eventually provided us with snacks and lots of lemonade. I had actually made a friend in the process.
She sat out there all day with us with the “excuse” she wanted to be sure we were doing a good job, but we secretly thought that she wanted the company. Our friend was a widow for 14 years, was fairly wealthy, but did not have many friends or family who visited her. She was very lonely and had no focus in her life at all. I grew to really like talking with her and listening to her stories. When we finished the deck, she looked sad to see us go and asked us to paint some other things for her, such as the back fence.

Eventually we had nothing left to paint for our friend, so we left for other work in other places in the condo park. For the rest of the summer as we painted in the condominium subdivision, my older friend would find us and hang around, bringing us snacks and small gifts and we listened to her stories and told her our own.

Our role in the ecclesia
We are the youth of the bride of Christ; we are the energy, the enthusiasm, the fire, the zeal and the future for the community. We fear no man, have few responsibilities, and much to give our various ecclesias. We have a great responsibility and can give much to those in our ecclesia who are in the evening of their lives.

We may think that the older members of our family in Christ are on a different level from us and not easy to approach. We may feel uncomfortable with attempting to befriend those who are much older than us. We may even have the idea that the elderly are not part of our world and think that they grew up in an entirely different world with different temptations, troubles, and joys.

The fact is they were once the young. The joys that we discover each day were also discovered by our older brothers and sisters. They are really not so different from us at all. It is difficult to take the first step towards getting to intimately know an older brother or sister at our ecclesia. But once we take this first step and offer the older brother or sister our trust, they will reciprocate and we will become friends.

Solomon comments on the young and the old in Ecclesiastes 12. “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.”

While we are young, it is important to use our youth for a good purpose. We need to invigorate the ecclesia, much as my painting team did that hot summer for Mrs. Needles. The elderly may be separate in our society, but in the ecclesia of God we have to fight this.

Other cultures differ
It is a remarkable phenomenon of our western culture to neglect the elderly. In other cultures, such as those in Latin America, the elderly in the community are the respected. The duty of the young is to provide support for the elderly in those cultures. The young are the friends of the old. The young take care of the old and think of them as wiser. In our North American culture, the opposite is true. Older people are treated with indifference, with little or no respect. The older beloved brothers and sisters are the wisest and most experienced members in the ecclesia. We have the opportunity to befriend them and gain much.

I’ve found that a talk with an older brother or sister is incredibly uplifting for myself. I’ve learned so much from my grandparents and their friends. At the same time, we can give them energy and encouragement to continue on in their lives in the Lord. When we see older brothers and sisters sitting by themselves at meeting, we can join them and be a caring friend. After meeting we can call or speak to them and let them know that we are interested in them and love them. Let us use our youthful energy to uplift the poor in spirit and raise the tired in body to spiritual life in the Lord.

Joel Robinson, Brantford, Ontario
June 1999