It's Never Too Late

A famous theologian once said that every good preacher should always have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. While that counsel might seem somewhat dated since these days almost no one reads a newspaper, the logic behind it is anything but dated.

The logic behind that counsel is that every good preacher should endeavor to keep the eternal (The Bible) and the temporal (symbolized by the newspaper or any other source of current information) in constant contact and conversation. Every good preacher should build a bridge between what God thinks and what we are thinking. One of my mentors was fond of saying that it is a bad sign if after hearing a sermon you can’t determine what year it is. Every good preacher should make it his or her business to be both timely and timeless.

The challenge to be both timely and timeless is one that I take quite seriously.  I constantly scan the news, blogsphere, and cyberspace for stories that provide a window through which we can glimpse divine truth. Earlier this week, I stumbled across a story that did just that. I don’t even remember where I saw this story, but I jotted it down in my notebook because I hardly believed what I read.

On February 24, 2025, a soap opera called “Beyond The Gates” premiered on CBS. “The show, set in a gated suburb of Washington, DC suburb, follows the the Dupree family, an affluent, multi-generational African American family.” When I read that description of the show, my mind staged a revolt against my eyes. Rarely if ever, do you see “affluent, multi-generational African-American families” depicted anywhere. If they are depicted, rarely are they the central focus. And if they are the central focus, rarely is that the case on network television. But alas, tis true. And there’s more: since it’s inception, the show has been a ratings bonanza, even keeping pace with the legendary soap General Hospital in terms of viewership among key demographics.

Now to many of you, this is old news—because you watch television. I rarely do, so it was news to me. And even better news is the fact that the show was created by an African American woman named Michele Val Jean. And the best news of all, Mrs. Val Jean is 73!! The idea that a 73 year-old African-American woman could create the number one soap opera on television is a reminder that it is never too late.

At age 73, most people are retired.  Or thinking about retirement. At age 73. most people aren’t watching television.  The television is watching them. At age 73, most people aren’t thinking about creating anything. They are trying to remember where they put their bedroom slippers.  Or their teeth.  But what an amazing and necessary reminder that is is never too late!

It’s a lesson that too many of us have forgotten. But it is a lesson that meets us over and over again throughout the scriptures. One of the best examples is the story of Caleb. At age 80, he goes to his long time friend Joshua and makes a demand. According to Joshua 14:10-14, Caleb says:

And now, look, the Lord has let me live, just as He said, these forty-five years since the Lord spoke this word to Moses, when Israel wandered in the wilderness; and now, look at me, I am eighty-five years old today. I am still as strong today as I was the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so is my strength now, for war and for going out and coming in. So now, give me this (mountain) about which the Lord spoke that day, for you heard on that day that the [giant-like] Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”

At age 80, Caleb asks for a mountain! Far too many of us, as Benjamin Franklin once observed, die at 25 but aren’t buried until we are 75. After a tragedy, disappointment, betrayal, failure, a mistake or a miscalculation, we surrender our dreams, and settle for a mundane existence “as though to breathe were life.”

But as Caleb kept asking and Mrs. Val Jean kept creating, may you keep building, keep reaching, keep hoping, keep trying, keep loving, and keep praying!