A few days ago I was driving past one of those planned neighborhoods and a sign out front was inviting the "post active" crowd to come on in and have a tour. It took me several seconds to grasp what the term was referring to. Was this a community for veterans? After a few beats I realized that in fact it was a polite but insidious euphemism for seniors. But it wasn't enough to say "If you born before this date in 1958 you're welcome here." Instead it presumed to indicate your level of activity after that 55th birthday - your level of usefulness. "Now that you're an old coot, sit down and take a breath. Lord knows you'll need it. And we assume that you are bored, thinking about fishing all the time, and basically useless. But that would be rude so we'll call it 'post-active.'" One of the biggest mistakes of our current World enemy is the unchecked worship of youth and the consequent dismissal of wisdom. The wisest, most experienced, most mature members of our world often feel cast aside - and for good reason. Everything about the way we live our day to day lives is geared toward the young and the reckless while we get closer and closer to a Logan's Run vision of our 60s and beyond. Moses, on the other hand, didn't hang up his staff at 60. In fact, he was still 20 years BEFORE his great mission to free Israel from Pharaoh. He was 120 years old when he moved on and the Word says that he was 'Undimmed in his eye and still getting busy.' (loose translation)In The Masculine Journey john talks about kings as sages as the stages of greatest strength and influence in a man's life. When all the hard work and refinement of the previous years comes to a razor sharp point and a man becomes a scalpel in the hands of God, truly able to separate sinew from bone and effect change in the world at a level no 'warrior' could dream of. But if a sage of the Kingdom is put to pasture, or worse, if that man willingly retreats from the field for fear of feeling invalidated...the loss to the Kingdom is truly immense.