Live long and prosper

Live long and prosper
Proverbs 16:31 “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.”

Gray hair is an idiom for old age. The author is remarking on the greater likelihood that those that live well live long – or longer. Once again, a Bible proverb as this one is not a promise but an accurate observation of life.
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I am drawn to discover the reasons behind suicides as they are reported and deaths that occur early in life. It will be sometime yet before we are blessed with an age that is not plagued by futility. Yet, there is a path often not taken that usually leads to longer life. Here the writer identifies it as one of right living. He has moral righteousness in mind as a rule. By moral righteousness he is as a Jewish man concerned with what is right according to the creator and author of a transcendent law. There are those enriched by a written accessible codex such as the Bible, and there are others with that same law in basic form written on their hearts and signaled by their conscience and passed on by good parenting.

One commandment of the famous ten delivered to the Israelites from the roof of Mount Sinai goes so far as to say that the honor of father and mother will lead to a good long life.

Either way, the person of any stripe that lives the code tends to live longer.

Most of us, due in large part to our foolishness, will suffer close calls, brushes with death, closer in some cases than we realize. How far we allow our foolishness to rule our decisions is up to us.

As one author put it, “When I was a child I did as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Make it so.

Grace today y’all