Honor The Seasons: Why We Erase The Elderly And What It Costs Us
As I was finishing this scroll, a neuroscience study surfaced that I need you to see first.
University of Louisville researchers recorded a dying human brain for the first time in history. An 87-year-old patient with epilepsy was being monitored when he unexpectedly had a heart attack and passed away. The EEG kept recording.
What they found stopped them cold.
In the thirty seconds before and after the heart stopped, the brain produced rhythmic oscillations, gamma, delta, theta, alpha, beta waves, identical to the patterns seen during deep memory recall, meditation, and dreaming. The kind of activity associated with reviewing your entire life. With remembering.
The lead neurosurgeon, Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, said it plainly: “Through generating brain oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences.”
They measured it. They documented it. And now they’re asking questions they weren’t prepared to answer: When does life actually end? If the brain is still active after the heart stops, what does that mean for death itself?
The researchers called it intriguing. They admitted it challenges everything we thought we knew about the moment of death. But they don’t have a framework to interpret what they just observed.
What they recorded isn’t a malfunction. It’s not random neural noise in a dying system. It’s exactly what Scripture has been describing for three thousand years: the inward man being renewed even as the outward man perishes. The soul consolidating. The seed preparing to be planted.
Winter isn’t shutdown. It’s final preparation before the transition.
They measured the biology. What you’re about to read is the theology that explains what the biology is pointing to, and what comes after the brain waves stop.
This isn’t speculation. This is the framework that makes sense of what even secular science is now forced to observe: that the end of this life isn’t termination. It’s the threshold to what comes next.
Let me show you what winter is actually preparing you for.
Winter Crowns
We honor seasons in nature but ignore them in human life.
Spring brings new growth. Summer explodes with productivity. Fall delivers the harvest. Winter strips everything back to prepare for renewal.
No farmer curses winter for not producing crops. No gardener shames spring for not yielding fruit. The seasons aren’t competing. They’re cooperating. Each one has its function, its beauty, its irreplaceable role in the cycle.
But when it comes to human life, we’ve forgotten this.
Modern culture operates as if there’s only one season that matters: summer. The season of peak physical capacity, maximum productivity, and visible output. If you’re not in summer, you’re told you’re wasting time, missing out, or becoming irrelevant.
Youth is rushed into adult responsibilities before formation is complete. Adults are ground down by the demand for constant productivity. And the elderly? They’re erased. Dismissed as outdated. Hidden in nursing homes. Mocked for not understanding technology. Treated as burdens rather than bearers of wisdom.
This isn’t progress. It’s a profound spiritual sickness.
Because God designed human life to operate in seasons just like creation does. And the culture that ignores this design doesn’t just harm individuals. It severs itself from the accumulated wisdom necessary for survival.
Let me show you what we’ve lost, and why it matters more than you think.
We don’t just work in cycles. We live in them.
If you look at the arc of a human life, the pattern is undeniable. Childhood and youth mirror spring: formation, growth, and the planting of seeds. Young adulthood and middle age mirror summer: building, producing, and executing at peak capacity. Middle age into elderhood mirrors fall: harvesting the fruit of earlier labor and transitioning into wisdom. And old age mirrors winter: rest, reflection, and preparation for what comes next.
Each season has a distinct purpose. Each one contributes something the others cannot. And just like in nature, forcing the wrong activity in the wrong season destroys the whole system.
You can’t harvest in spring. The crops aren’t ready. You can’t plant in winter. The ground is frozen. And you can’t expect summer’s productivity to last forever without burning out the soil.
Human life operates the same way. But we’ve been conditioned to treat every season as if it should look like summer. And the result is a culture full of exhausted adults, dismissed elders, and young people who have no idea how to grow up because no one modeled the transitions.
Let’s map the seasons.
Spring is childhood and youth. This is the season of formation. High energy, rapid growth, endless curiosity. The primary task here isn’t productivity. It’s learning. Absorbing. Building the foundation of character, knowledge, and skill that will be needed in the seasons ahead.
Scripture calls this the season of training. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” This isn’t about indoctrination. It’s about formation. You’re planting seeds. You’re teaching a young soul how to see the world, how to think, how to relate to God and others.
Spring isn’t meant to bear the weight of summer. Children and young people are being formed, not fully formed. They need time, space, and guidance. But modern culture rushes them. It hands them smartphones at eight. It pressures them into adult decisions before their brains are fully developed. It treats adolescence as an obstacle to productivity instead of a necessary stage of growth.
The result? A generation that never experienced real childhood. They were thrust into adult anxieties, digital addictions, and existential crises before they had the tools to handle them. And now we wonder why they’re struggling.
Summer is young adulthood and middle age. This is the season of execution. Peak physical capacity. High energy. Maximum output. This is when you build your career, establish your household, raise your children, and execute the calling you’ve been given.
Ecclesiastes 11:9 says, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.” This is the season to work hard, take risks, and pour yourself into the labor. Your body can handle it. Your mind is sharp. Your energy is abundant.
But here’s the critical reality: summer doesn’t last forever. And if you treat it like it does, you’ll destroy yourself. The modern expectation is that you should be able to sustain summer-level productivity indefinitely. Work sixty-hour weeks. Stay digitally connected around the clock. Produce, perform, compete, climb. No rest. No sabbath. No acknowledgment that this pace is unsustainable.
That’s not strength. That’s a death march. And the bodies piling up from burnout, addiction, and stress-related disease are proof that we’ve violated something fundamental about how humans are designed to function.
Fall is middle age into elderhood. This is the season of wisdom. Your physical capacity is declining, but your experiential knowledge is maximizing. You’ve seen enough cycles to recognize patterns. You’ve made enough mistakes to know what doesn’t work. You’ve accumulated insights that can’t be learned from books or screens.
This is the season of mentoring, guiding, and passing on what you’ve learned. Titus 2:3-5 instructs the older women to teach the younger women. The older men are to be examples of soundness in faith, in conduct, in love. This isn’t optional. It’s the function of the season.
Fall is also the season of harvest. You’re reaping the fruit of what you planted and cultivated in earlier years. Your children are grown. Your work has matured. Your relationships have depth. This isn’t decline. It’s culmination.
But Babylon can’t monetize wisdom the way it monetizes productivity. So it erases this season entirely. It forces people into retirement, which is just a polite way of saying, “You’re no longer valuable.” It dismisses their counsel as outdated. It mocks their lack of fluency with the latest technology as if that’s the measure of worth.
And in doing so, it severs the entire culture from the very thing it needs most: the perspective of people who’ve actually lived long enough to see the consequences of decisions.
Winter is old age. This is the season of rest, reflection, and preparation. Physical capacity is minimal. Mobility is limited. The body is winding down. But this is not a season without purpose.
Winter is when you pass on final blessings, settle accounts, and model how to face death with faith. Genesis 49 records Jacob blessing his sons before he dies. Second Timothy 4:7 captures Paul’s final words: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”
Winter is also preparation. Not just for the individual’s death, but for the next generation’s spring. In nature, winter strips everything back so that new life can emerge. In human life, the elderly prepare the way for those who come after them by releasing what they’ve held, blessing what they’ve built, and demonstrating that death is not the end.
But modern culture treats winter as a failure. Old age is something to be hidden, medicated, and denied. We don’t honor it. We’re embarrassed by it. We shuffle the elderly into nursing homes where they’re out of sight and out of mind, as if their presence is an inconvenience rather than a gift.
That’s not compassion. That’s erasure.
So why does Babylon erase the elderly?
Because Babylon measures value by productivity. And the elderly are no longer productive in the way Babylon defines it. They’re not building empires. They’re not consuming products. They’re not generating revenue. So in Babylon’s economy, they’re irrelevant.
But there’s something deeper and more sinister at work.
The elderly are dangerous to Babylon because they remember. They remember what the culture was like before the latest inversion. They remember when marriage meant covenant, not convenience. They remember when children were protected, not sexualized. They remember when a man’s word meant something and a handshake was binding.
They are living witnesses to the fact that things were different. And that memory is a threat to the system. Because if the elderly can remember what was, they can testify that what is now is not normal, not inevitable, and not acceptable.
So Babylon doesn’t just dismiss them. It actively erases them. It mocks them as out of touch. It rewrites history so the young have no reference point. It creates a culture where the old are invisible and the young are convinced that progress means rejecting everything that came before.
That’s not innovation. That’s amnesia. And a culture with amnesia will repeat every mistake because it has no elders to warn them.
The Scripture is explicit about this. Leviticus 19:32 commands, “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and thou shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord.”
Notice the structure. The command to honor the elderly is directly tied to the fear of God. You can’t claim to fear God while dishonoring those He has allowed to live long. To dismiss the gray-haired is to dismiss the God who crowned them with years.
Proverbs 16:31 says, “The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.” Gray hair isn’t a sign of decline. It’s a crown. It’s evidence of a life lived, of battles fought, of wisdom earned.
Proverbs 20:29 draws the distinction clearly: “The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the gray head.” Both are glorious. Both have their place. But they’re different. And the culture that only values the strength of youth while despising the wisdom of age is a culture that has lost its way.
The brutal truth
You are in a season right now. And whatever season you’re in, it’s not permanent.
If you’re young, you won’t always have the energy you have now. Spring turns into summer. Use this time to learn, to form your character, to plant seeds that will bear fruit later. Don’t rush into summer. Let the formation happen. And for God’s sake, listen to the people who’ve already walked the path you’re on. They know where the traps are.
If you’re in adulthood, you won’t always have the capacity you have now. Summer turns into fall. Work hard. Build well. Execute your calling. But don’t treat this season as if it’s the only one that matters. Don’t sacrifice your health, your family, or your soul on the altar of productivity. And start preparing now to transition into wisdom. Because if you don’t, you’ll hit fall still trying to operate like it’s summer, and you’ll burn out.
If you’re an elder, you are not irrelevant. Your season has shifted, but it hasn’t ended. You have wisdom the young don’t have. You have perspective the culture desperately needs. Your task now is to mentor, to teach, to share what you’ve learned. Don’t try to compete with summer’s productivity. That’s not your season anymore. Embrace fall. Be the harvest. Pass it on.
And if you’re in old age, your presence matters. Your life is a testimony. The way you face this final season, the way you prepare for death, the blessings you speak over the next generation, these things carry weight. You are modeling something the young don’t yet understand but will one day need: how to finish well.
The problem is that most of us have been so conditioned by Babylon’s framework that we don’t even recognize we’re violating the design. We feel guilty in winter for not producing like it’s summer. We despise our elders for slowing down. We panic at the first signs of aging because we’ve been taught that youth is the only season worth inhabiting.
But God designed the seasons. All of them. And He called them good.
To honor the seasons is to honor the Creator. To reject them is to rebel against the order He established.
So what does it look like to live in alignment with your season?
It starts with recognizing where you are. Look at your energy level. Your output. Your focus. Are you planting, building, harvesting, or resting? Don’t judge your current season by the standards of a different one. Spring isn’t failing because it’s not producing a harvest. Winter isn’t lazy because it’s not building. Each season has its task.
Then honor the seasons of those around you. Don’t rush the young into adult burdens they’re not ready for. Don’t grind adults into the ground with the expectation of infinite productivity. And for the love of God, stop dismissing the elderly. Stand when they enter the room. Ask for their counsel. Listen to their stories. Treat their gray hair like the crown Scripture says it is.
This isn’t sentimentality. This is obedience.
And finally, prepare for your next season. If you’re in spring, invest in the formation that will serve you in summer. If you’re in summer, start building the wisdom and relational capital that will matter in fall. If you’re in fall, settle your accounts and bless the next generation. And if you’re in winter, face what’s coming with faith, knowing that this isn’t the end. It’s a transition.
Because here’s what Babylon doesn’t want you to know: winter isn’t the final season. Death is not the end of the cycle. There’s a spring coming that never ends. A season of eternal life, eternal vitality, eternal joy. But to get there, you have to go through winter. And winter is where you learn to let go of what you can’t take with you and hold on to what you can.
The culture that erases its elders is a culture that has forgotten how to die well. And a culture that doesn’t know how to die well doesn’t know how to live well either.
We’ve built a civilization terrified of aging, obsessed with youth, and in complete denial about death.
We medicate it. We hide it. We pretend it’s not coming. And in doing so, we’ve lost the wisdom that only comes from people who’ve lived long enough to see the whole cycle.
The elderly are not a burden. They are a gift. They are the ones who remember. The ones who’ve seen enough to know what matters and what doesn’t. The ones who can tell you, from experience, that the things the culture says are essential are actually worthless, and the things the culture dismisses as irrelevant are actually eternal.
But if we don’t honor them, we lose that. We lose the memory. We lose the perspective. We lose the warning.
And we end up repeating the same mistakes, generation after generation, because we refused to listen to the only people who could have told us the truth.
Leviticus 19:32 isn’t a suggestion. It’s a command. And it’s tied directly to the fear of God.
You want to know if a culture fears God? Look at how it treats its elderly.
If they’re honored, consulted, and cared for, that culture still has a chance. If they’re mocked, dismissed, and hidden away, that culture is already dead. It just doesn’t know it yet.
We are living in a culture that has severed itself from its elders. And the consequences are everywhere. A generation that doesn’t know how to grow up because no one modeled maturity. A generation that’s terrified of aging because no one modeled how to do it with dignity. A generation that’s paralyzed by the fear of death because no one modeled how to face it with faith.
This is what happens when you erase winter. You lose the wisdom that prepares you for spring.
So here’s the choice:
You can keep operating like Babylon, measuring worth by productivity, worshiping youth, and erasing the seasons God designed. Or you can align yourself with the rhythm He built into creation.
Honor your season. Honor the seasons of others. And stop pretending that summer is the only one that counts.
Because the gray head is a crown. And the culture that forgets that is a culture that has lost the fear of God.
Rise before the hoary head. Not because they’re perfect. Not because they’ve earned it by being right about everything. But because God commanded it. And because dishonoring them is dishonoring Him.
The seasons are turning. The question is whether you’ll turn with them, or whether you’ll keep trying to force a rhythm that was never yours to control.
Winter comes for all. The only question is whether you face it with the counsel of those who’ve survived it, or alone in denial.
Thank you for this incredibly, well presented column. It beautifully capsulizes our life cycles, and as a 79-year-old individual, obliterates the all-to common fallacy of the elder generation that our society shuts away, denigrates and maligns. Thank you SO much for expressing our actual value. 😊
Wow ! fantastic ! thank you !