O my Lord God, this is the awful burden I feel in ageing: that I am your useless servant. My body is lumpish and clumsy, its beauty gone: I am stiff on my thickened legs, and cannot speed about serving others and you. My thoughts seem not to come out clearly, and I irritate others by my slowness in speech and decision and action. And Lord so many of my family and friends aren’t here any more – I look about me and it’s lonely, Lord. The past was full of laughter and companionship and hope and energy and service. Now my world has contracted to this small space. O Lord, I’m little use to you, and a burden to others.

So help me, Lord. Help me to bear it graciously. Help me to remember the past not with nostalgia but with thankfulness. Help me:

• To suffer diminishments of body and mind and activity with humor and detachment;
• To offer the gifts of old age: time, leisure, quiet, tolerance, understanding and love, to your glory and the service of others, by using them in the way I still can, in praying and in caring;
• To accept dependency graciously when it must come, letting it remind me that I have always been utterly dependent on you;
• Never to criticize when I can praise;
• Never to complain when I can thank;
• Never to despair when I can hope;
• And to offer these to you and others for Christ’s sake.

(Ruth Etchells, Just As I am, p.168)