I receive a weekly blog from my friend and former pastor Dr. John Ed Mathison. Last Wednesday’s was encouraging on many levels as he told the story of Doug McKelvy memorizing the Sermon on the Mount and presenting it to high school students:

He is seventy-nine years old. He could be sitting back playing dominoes or golf or watching television. Instead, he feels like his best days of witness are today and the days ahead. That’s an attitude with which to grow older!

He decided to memorize the Sermon on the Mount. That’s right—three chapters of the Bible in Matthew. I was invited to give the prayer at the Chapel program where all the seventh through twelfth-grade students at Alabama Christian Academy met to experience his rendition verbatim from the Sermon on the Mount.

That’s inspiring right there. 79 years old and still active. Still memorizing scripture. Still interacting with high school students. And John Ed doesn’t mention that he (John Ed) is still going strong at age 87, 15+ years after he retired as a pastor.

But what inspires me even more is this paragraph:

Doesn’t God have a sense of humor? Here is a Methodist preacher giving the prayer for God to bless the hearing and application of a seventy-nine-year-old Baptist lawyer speaking to a huge group of students at a Church of Christ high school. – Dr. John Ed Mathison, February 14, 2024

And I, a member of a Presbyterian church, am writing about it. We’re all on the same team!

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13.35, NIV)

John spoke up, “Teacher, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we stopped him because he wasn’t in our group.” Jesus wasn’t pleased. “Don’t stop him. No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath cut me down. If he’s not an enemy, he’s an ally.” (Mark 9.38 – 40, MSG)