Older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not addicted to much wine. They are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, pure, good homemakers, and submissive to their husbands, so that God's message will not be slandered. For the grace of God has appeared, with salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Why should today's young people have to learn their lessons the hard way, when we've already walked so many of the same pathways, felt so many of the same pressures, seen so many of the Lord's promises come true? So many of them need us so much.

Few of us really think we have a lot to say to others. Our lives because they're ours, the only eyes we've ever looked through can seem quite ordinary, uneventful, unimportant. But we have something we can share things no one else has seen quite the way we've seen them. Even our fears and failures even the ones we struggle with at this very moment are object lessons that have much to teach, to reveal, to inspire. We can't do everything, but can we do anything more valuable than invest ourselves in another?

Think of the vast number of older women today. We live longer now than we did forty years ago. There is more mobility, more money around, more leisure, more health and strength resources which, if put at God's disposal, might bless younger women. But there are also many more ways to spend those resources, so we find it very easy to occupy ourselves selfishly. Where are the women, single or married, willing to hear God's call to spiritual motherhood, taking spiritual daughters under their wings to school them as Mom Cunningham did me? She had no training the world would recognize. She simply loved God and was willing to be broken bread and poured-out wine for his sake. Retirement never crossed her mind. - Elisabeth Elliot