Wholehearted Caleb (Joshua 14) from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

Its fairly safe to say that half of us know from first experience what a mid-life crisis is all about. The other half knows from second-hand experience and can only anticipate this joyful state. The further I get beyond mid-life the more resolute I’ve become about daily exercise. I’m becoming more diligent about what I eat and drink, more intentional about work outs in the gym. I’ve tried my hand at extreme sport (once and never again),  and I confess that I would like my next car to have only two seats….  Apparently all signs of someone well and truly in mid-life.

Yesterday I completed a detailed health survey provided by my insurer in the hope that it might reduce my premiums. They compared me with hundreds of other 57 year olds and worked out when I am likely to need medication or surgery based on my diet, weight and fitness regime. Its designed to motivate me to lose the extra pounds by walking the extra miles and avoiding the extra calories.

According to a recent survey by Virgin, half of all 35-64 year olds resort to a personal trainer at some stage. One in four takes a sabbatical from their career to contemplate their future, and up to a third will turn to Botox or plastic surgery in an attempt to turn back the clock. Last year British men in their forties spent £2 billion on cosmetics and fitness products – from moisturisers and hair colouring to exercise bikes and weights – why? to put off the inevitable and retain their youth. And that’s just the men…. These are some ways we cope with a midlife crisis.

There’s another way to handle growing old. We discover it in the story of Caleb and there’s a very good reason for doing so. The Apostle Paul indirectly refers to Caleb when he says,

“For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.” (1 Corinthians 10:1-6)

So what lessons can we learn from the story of Caleb? Here are three from Joshua 14 (please turn to it with me).

1.      You are never too young to develop convictions about the purposes of God.
2.      You are never foolish to exercise trust in the promises of God.
3.      You are never too old to demonstrate courage in the power of God.

Listen to the audio here

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Ephesians 6: The Armour of God from Stephen Sizer on Vimeo.

The 18th July is an auspicious day in history. On 18th July 1925 Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf (My Struggle) which he wrote in prison following the Nazi Party’s abortive coup against the Bavarian government. On 18th July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began which enabled Hitler to field test the weapons he would eventually use in 1938 against Czechoslovakia and Poland. But if those dates were too early for you, do you remember what you were doing in 1962? I was nine years old. I remember coming home from school one day and my mother calmly said, “the world nearly ended today”. It had begun on October 16, 1962, when John F. Kennedy called together his closest advisers at the White House. Late the night before, the CIA had produced detailed photo intelligence identifying Soviet nuclear missile installations under construction on the island of Cuba, ninety miles off the Florida coast.

Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara outlined 3 possible courses of action: 1. “the political course”. Openly approaching Castro, Khrushchev and allies to resolve the crisis diplomatically – an option unlikely to succeed; 2. “open surveillance” coupled with “a blockade against offensive weapons entering Cuba”; and 3. “military action directed against Cuba, starting with an air attack against the missiles.”[1] Thankfully, President Kennedy chose the second option and authorised a naval blockade in international waters against Soviet ships carrying missile equipment. In the brinkmanship that followed during the next tense 13 days as the ships carrying the missiles drew closer to Cuba, it was the Russians who blinked first and backed down.

Three decades later, Soviets, Cubans, and Americans learned how close the world had come to a nuclear Armageddon. A unique conference was held in Havana, in 1992. It was attended by former Kennedy administration members, Soviet participants in the crisis, and a Cuban delegation led by President Fidel Castro. Soviet General Anatoly Gribkov admitted that Soviet commanders in Cuba had been authorised to fire their tactical nuclear weapons without further direction from the Kremlin had they been attacked.

More worryingly, U.S. officials had mistaken a number of Soviet actions as deliberate “signals” from the Kremlin when, in fact, they had not been cleared by Khrushchev. And unbeknown to the White House, officials of the CIA and the U.S. military had also undertaken a number of unauthorised and aggressive operations such as dispatching covert sabotage teams into Cuba which were similarly misunderstood by the Soviets. To compound the misunderstanding, during those tense 13 days, a U.S. military aircraft accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace. This combination of unauthorized military actions, misinterpreted political signals, and significant failures in intelligence – all threatened – but for the grace of God – to hurl us into an apocalyptic Armageddon scenario – such as we would probably not be meeting today. It was the closest the world has come, so far, to nuclear war. With heightened anxiety over Iran’s aspirations and pre-emptive strikes by Israel and/or the USA, never before has the importance of diplomacy to solve international disputes been so critical. And yet, there is another war, a far more insidious, destructive war, that engulfs our world.

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