Sage Life After Hours

Hi, I'm Joanne Bickner, Memaw with It's Storytime Memaw, an answered prayer for stories that point children to God on the Truth Network for kids. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. So if you hear gunfire, based on the fact that we're in this entrenched bunker, don't be concerned because these new 3D printers out there, people are making their own guns. Weapons of math destruction for a long time.

So I had a Canon printer, and of course, we took care of stuff like that. I had to get that one in. I love it.

That just makes... You get a lot of mileage with that one, aren't you? So today's show, as you might guess, if you listen to the show on, you know, the original one, it's on, how's it called? Saj-jers-ism? Sajaciousness.

Saj-jesus? Sagacity is one. Sagacity.

That's what my grandkids say is my problem is I got older, sagacity. Anyway, it has to do with misconceptions about aging. And sagacity is definitely a misconception, isn't it? It's not a misconception, though. Oh, okay. That's one of the realities or truths. Sagacity.

So anyway, unlike the show that we did in the regular hours, the after-hours show, we're going to start with the youngest in the crowd, which would in fact be Rodney. And so Rodney, you know, you went at this at a very different angle as usual. And so... Yep. Yep. It must be your own sagacity. Sagacious. Oh, how sagacious of you.

Yeah. When I first had the topic, you know, it was like, well, one of the things we always want to do is honor the sages with, you know, the wisdom that they have and what they mean in our lives. And I'm usually not the one to bring the humor clip. But this time with Home Improvement, I was thinking of something from there. And then I started looking and right off the bat, I found Wilson and Tim at the fence. And I'm like, oh, this is good.

So if anybody's interested in looking up to get the whole thing, it's like, what is it? 23 of Wilson's Best Moments is kind of the clip name. And it's just a montage of Tim and Wilson at the fence talking. And Wilson's supposed to be the sage.

You know, he's over the fence. He's supposed to be wise and help Tim out because Tim's the younger father with a younger family. And he's trying to figure everything out and work through life.

But all he wants to be is the bull in the china shop. And Wilson's kind of always given the advice of, well, you may want to think about this a little more, Tim. Tim doesn't like to think he just likes to do.

And I think we've all had those moments in our lives. So why don't we just go ahead and play the clip? Tim, would you mind listening while I ruminate? No, go ahead.

Use the bush over by the gazebo. What are you doing? Tim, I'm pondering my bones. Is that funny how guys never got tired of doing that? Tim, are you familiar with the etching?

Sure. The etching, the scratchy, the chafing. That's why I switched to boxers, my friend.

Wilson, swallow a pigeon? No, Tim, I'm ululating. I didn't know men could do that. Just hosing off my rocks.

If your shower's broken, you could use ours. He's having a problem. I wonder why he just didn't come and tell me. It's hard for a boy to come to his father and expose his fallibility. Oh, it's not like I haven't seen the kid in the shower before. What are you doing? Tim, I am shooting the moon.

Aren't you supposed to have your pants down for that? There was a time when I thought my extensive research into ancient tribal cultures, obscure scientific data, the thoughts of great philosophers would never come in handy. Then you moved in. So you're saying I should make Shakespeare more accessible to the students? If you blow it with these kids, they might learn to hate the theater. That'd be a whole new generation of people like me.

Well, I don't want that. Were you talking about a real UFO? Maybe.

Have you seen a real UFO? Maybe. Hold on, is this us out here?

Maybe. You know, Tim, this obsessive desire to create partly happens because men feel inferior to women. Huh?

It's because we can't bear children. I don't mind the boys that much. So I go back on my show and look like a fool again. Tim, Tim, Tim, the first step for greatness is humbling yourself.

Oh, yeah. Maybe you shouldn't try to have all the answers and instead ask more questions. You see, Tim, a truly wise man always has more questions than answers.

Things just aren't always as they seem, are they? We love to couch many, many things in humor. Wisdom is just one of them. You know, we'll just instead of coming out and just saying something very bluntly, we work around it in humor and all kinds of other things to kind of soften the blow sometimes. You know, we want to, oh, consider his or her feelings and things of that nature. And we love to also just in our culture today have some kind of humorous slant to almost everything we do. So the criticism of somebody, what do we do? We use some kind of humor to slight them or do something and make somebody laugh.

It's just a way of gaining control in situations. But when it comes to this, when things aren't always as they seem, I know like being a young man, I used to think I had a lot of things figured out. I knew there were some things I absolutely didn't have figured out. But there were others I'm like, no, I know what I need to do here.

I know what I need to do as far as a job, how to run the family, how to invest and do stuff with finances. What was the right decision to make? Do we buy the car?

Don't buy the car. You know, whatever the food or where we're going to eat. You just knew all these things in daily life and you realize over time it's like more and more and more. I didn't have hardly anything figured out.

And when it comes to the bigger issues of life, I definitely didn't have it figured out until about 10 years ago. And God smacked me upside the head of a J. Vernon McGee and said, you know, you're completely living a life that is foreign to me and you need to come follow me. And I'm just glad he brought me into his kingdom because I'm like, I should think of how much I would still be floundering trying to deal with things that have happened in my life since then. But it's just one of those things where the more you're around men, specifically for men, men bestow manliness to boys.

And that's where you're going to grow. And when you're around men who know the Bible and men that can teach you and men that can actually demonstrate godly manliness, is one of those things where you just all of a sudden, like we've talked about experience, it's like, well, I see it, I hear it, and now I have a chance to actually step into it. And it can be scary because you're like, well, somebody is watching me as I'm watching them. And you've got to be really thoughtful of what you're doing all the time. But it's a wonderful reward because you know that, hey, for all the stupid things you do, at least he forgives you of all that and he can let you go on and keep being a son, that adopted son that we talk about. And it's just a great feeling to walk through all that with him and to walk through it with other men in this room. Yeah. And, you know, John obviously talked about that in his epistle where he talked about to the younger men, to the older men that, you know, there was supposed to be this relationship between older and younger and even older and older.

He doesn't stop. And older and older. Yeah. Yeah.

But so I'm really curious, Art, one of the things I've been curious about for, you know, probably the last four or five years. Wherefore art thou? Yeah. Wherefore art thou? But no, actually, wherefore art thou older than Grant thou? I don't know. We're about the same age, I think.

Let it come out now. All right. So what year were you born, Grant? 65. 1965.

You are a young man. And so what year were you born? Did he say 65 or 55?

He said 1965. Oh, well, I am older. I was born 62. 19 and 62, which makes me 62 years old.

That's mathematically sound. Unless you were talking to Jim, who thinks you're 63. Okay. I will be soon. He's in his 63rd year.

I will be soon. It's in the new math. You can't be in your 63rd year until you're 63. And so are you 65 now that you're...

Hold on. I lied. 63. You were born... You lied? You said you were born in 65, but you were born in 63. Do you know how many people were born in 1963?

Do you? Absolutely not, but I do know that Sam was born in 1963. My wife was born in 1963. And Grant was born... The Grand Tour. Yeah, the Grand Tour.

My name's Greg. Oh, okay. So, Grant, you have a clip that you've actually never heard before, except you have heard it tonight. Yeah, this is... And so I'm interested in what your thoughts are. Well, this is kind of like giving a book report without having read the book, you know.

And no cliff notes either. In front of everybody. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, I think this is one of Sam's clips, but he's not here, so I accepted it. I accepted the challenge. This is a clip from the movie The Mask of Zorro.

And in it, Zorro... Was that with two Rs? You have to get somebody else to... I'm just kidding. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I can't.

Yeah, I never learned to do that. But yes, Zorro with two Rs. He recognizes a younger man who he knew in a past time when he was just a boy. And the younger man has a grudge against one of the government officials for having killed his brother, I think. And both of the brothers, the young man and his brother, had ended up going into a life of thuggery and thievery, I think.

And yeah, Robby says yes. I didn't see the movie. So Zorro knows that the young man, recognizes that the younger man is not really a skilled fighter, and he knows that the government official is. And he fights the young man himself. He prevents him from getting himself killed by getting in a fight with the government official. And then he says to the younger man, you know, if you really want to fight that man, I will teach you how to fight.

It will take a lot of time and a lot of work, but I can teach you. And the younger man accepted the challenge, and he trained with Zorro. And I'm not sure what happened after that, but it's an example of how the younger people can learn from the older people, the older people that have been there and been through the training and know more about what's going on in some cases. And sometimes this man was rather foolish to think he could fight the government official, but Zorro knew better and stopped him from doing that. Here we go. Who's that?

That's the man who killed my brother. You're drunk and you're angry and no condition to fight a professional soldier. Better off my way, old man. Would you care to try again?

You're welcome. For what? For saving your life. I would have killed him.

No, not today. He is trained to kill. You seem trained to drink. Yes, my friend, you would have fought very bravely and died very quickly. You then would avenge your brother. I would have found the way. I've never lost a fight.

Except you were crippled, old man, just now. What is your name? Alejandro.

Alejandro. You know there is a saying, a very old saying, when the pupil is ready, the master will appear. Now if you want to kill this man, I can help you and I can teach you how, how to move, how to think, how to take your revenge with honor and live to celebrate it.

It will take dedication, it will take time. Okay, well, like I said, that's an example of the old, old teaching the young. And, you know, if they put a microphone in front of me, I'm going to talk about something from the dog world. And it happens as well in the dog world. I had my, my Bella Claire, who was, she, my dog Bella Claire, she got to be about three years old and I got a puppy to go with her. Like an eight-week-old puppy. And I noticed it right off on our first walks, you know, the Bella Claire, the older dog, would walk along and stop and sniff at a place. And the puppy would trot along behind her and stop at the same place and sniff just like she did. And she would look back to, she would look out of the corner of the eye to see that he was doing that.

And he was. And then, you know, later she kind of trained him how to herd cows. And then after she got him trained, she would just go along and kind of supervise if he had any difficulty, stubborn cow or something.

She would run and be there to help him. But that was quite an amazing thing to see, the older dog training the younger one like that. I wanted to throw one thing in there. I'm very impressed, Art, that you spent time studying with Andy on how to set up a clip. With Andy?

Yeah. There were new tricks involved, you know, in that whole dog story, I'm pretty sure. Andy has helped me.

Yeah, one time I had a clip of my own and I was kind of going in the wrong direction with it. And he gave me, he sent me in the right direction and I did really well with it one time. I remember Andy helping me. He's helped us all from time to time.

We love him and miss him. So, you know, in your sort of farming world, was there an older farmer that took the young Art under his wing and, you know, showed you? Well, I'd have to say that I begrudgingly learned a few things from my father and I weren't always a happy camper at that. Yeah, I did have a cow and a calf that became estranged. The cow had the calf and walked off and got kind of confused and didn't, they were separate when I found them and I led the cow over to the calf and she acted like she didn't recognize this calf and wouldn't accept him, just walked away from it. And so I got them both in the barn and I restrained the mama cow by feeding her sweet feed, which is as good as a rope or better than a rope, and maneuvered the calf up to her and let him nurse. And after doing that a few times, they were doing it on their own and after a while they bonded together and that was something that I learned from my father.

That's something I learned how to do for my father. Really? Yeah. And so sometimes the old cows don't necessarily? Well, I don't know. She got confused. I guess the stress of having the baby is stressful for them and she was off at a different location and she was actually guarding her afterbirth. The afterbirth was where she was and she was guarding it from, well, from the dogs. She was trying to keep the dogs away from her afterbirth like maybe and she was mooing off in that direction like maybe she thought her calf was there. But yeah, she got, it happens sometimes, I mean, not terribly often, but sometimes they get separated that way, don't bond together.

So that's fascinating. Why would they, you know, not that you may not know, but why would they guard their afterbirth? Well, like I said, she was a little confused. She thought her calf was there. She didn't know where her calf was, but she was smelling this smell in this direction and she couldn't see the calf, but she thought maybe it was around. It was near there, so I assume.

She needed to protect it from the dogs, right? They would smell a lot alike. Yeah. So Grant, we got you here, even though apparently you are a couple years younger. Well, yeah, one year younger from 62 to 63. But anyway, on this topic for you, what jumps out as far as now that you are obviously in your 60s? I have the lack of mental and physical abilities.

But you've had those for a while. Especially mental. Yeah, since, you know, but what would you have guessed was better in your 60s than you would not have guessed when you were in your 20s? To be as my grandfather was.

And how was he? With the Lord. And physical.

From doing farm work. Yeah, yeah. You know, I heard that about the sage category one time, and I've never forgot it, that the older you get, the more your physical life fades, but your spiritual life, you know, increases.

And that obviously one becomes greater than the other, and so you nailed it with that one. You need a lot more of the promises of the Lord in the promise of heaven. There you go. Speaking of the promises of heaven, my clip is from Space Cowboys. They like that transition. It's a cow-like segue. Yeah, well, you know, it went right from, you know, the cow into the Space Cowboys. You know, it all works out. And, you know... For the name of Bart's... Yeah, Bart Starr was their quarterback, I'm pretty sure, of the Space Cowboys anyway. It fits Bart Starr, you know, anyway.

We're on a roll here. Anyway, in my clip, I always get a kick out of the idea that, you know, the older guys know some stuff that the younger guys really don't know, and it gives you a bit of an advantage. And so in this movie, if you ever go to see it or, you know, rent it or whatever you do, you know, it's pretty easy to get it on YouTube or wherever, Space Cowboys, you have Clint Eastwood. Is it Billy Lee Jones? What's his name? Tommy Lee. Tommy Lee.

Tommy. Yeah, there you go. And James Garner, one of my... You know, these guys are just great old actors, and they're all real geezers, and they all were training to be the first astronauts, but NASA, you might remember, picked, you know, a little lower form of primate than people to go into orbit. They used apes, if you might remember.

Anyway, so they were a little... They felt a little put aside by the space program, and they didn't get to go up when the monkeys did. And so in this movie, they're going to get their chance because the Russians have a satellite that the orbit is deteriorating, and they know that it's loaded with some older technology that's going to require some old pilots to go up there, and it's a pretty cool setup. And the way they get, you know, into the whole space program again, because they're the ones that have got to go deal with this problem that's going to...

They need to save the world, I'm just saying. So they have to learn how to fly a space shuttle. And, of course, these guys were pilots, you know, you can imagine, way back in the 50s and 60s. And so this particular one, Tommy Lee, is it Jones, is going to show them how to do a flying brick. Look, Hawk, this is not a stripped-down show plane.

You got to do it their way. I don't need a computer to tell me how to land a bear plane. It's not an airplane, Colonel. It's a flying brick on approach, and you got to use the on-board computer.

What if the on-board computer fails? It's never failed. Houston, horizon. Go, horizon. Request secondary landing, please. Houston, horizon. Request on-board computer failure on second landing.

All right, run it again. Horizon, stand by for second approach. Sock it to him. 3,000 feet coming in to you, Steve Hawk.

You got to pull up, sir, or you're going to lose it again. It's a fire in half, Bay 2. You're going to lose your avionics.

Well, I don't need them anyway. This thing's a flying brick on approach anyway, isn't it? Wind shear off the nose, and the fire is contained. Computers are down, sir.

She's all yours. 500 feet. Almost lined up. Your air speed is way too high.

Air speed is 490. Coming in too high. You're going to overshoot. You'll never get this thing stopped. No.

It's easy, Roger. All you got to do is tap on the brakes a little bit. Not that much. You'll put her into a stall.

100 feet. You know what you're doing, right? Yeah, I'm tapping on the brakes a little bit. Drop the nose. You're going to lose it. Knock it off. Drop the nose off. All right. What's the air speed?

200. You're right on that. I was going to say, we just dropped that nose. That's impossible. Well, for a computer, it might be. Lion brick. I like that.

Every old guy has just to be tickled by that whole scene of these young guys. They're computers, but he used it, right? He used all that experience to show you something, right? And this is what I call the Bob mentality, okay? So those of us who have ridden in many boats know that putting a boat in a dock is not necessarily the easiest thing, especially under certain weather conditions, the high wind and all that kind of stuff. And so I had a chance to rent a really large sailboat. I was getting trained to try to sail from Florida over to the Bahamas, and this guy was teaching me how to do that, and he said, well, one of the first important things is what he called Bob time, and to make it in terms I can use on the radio, we'll say bottom on boat. In other words, the more you sit on the boat, the more time you learn things. Only when you spend time in the boat are you able to land the boat like a flying brick, right? And that's the advantage of spending more time on this earth, walking with Jesus, is more Bob time, right?

It's time with the Savior will give you more sagacity, I don't know, whatever. Whichever you prefer. There you go.

Whichever amounts to anything the same way. That's very, very fun. Again, if you need more sagacity, and I'm guessing you do, you need to join us at the boot camp. We're coming up the weekend before Thanksgiving. Go to masculinejourneyradio.org. I hope to see you there. This is the Truth Network.