Forgive yourself before you get too old

The lectern of the Sophia Chapel where I preach each Wednesday to older adults. Photo: Gerald Farinas.

Every Wednesday morning, I lead Liturgy in the small chapel of what was once the Swedish Home. The building in which this chapel is set remains quiet, the kind of quiet that holds stories in its walls.

The people who gather—seniors in their seventies, eighties, nineties, and on special occasions, even a centenarian—bring with them decades of life lived: some in joy, some in sorrow, most in a blend of both.

Leading worship for them is a deep privilege, but it wasn’t always easy to know what to say.

When I first began, I struggled with the preaching. Other young folks have preached here before and they seemed to know what to say—Jacki Belile, Michael Van Oeveren, to name a few.

What could I possibly offer that would resonate with people who had seen so much?

What words could I bring that would matter to someone who had lived a full life—who had raised children, lost spouses, survived wars, buried friends, seen the world change in ways both beautiful and heartbreaking?

I didn’t want to speak in platitudes or assume I understood their lives better than I did—because I don’t.

But slowly, over the years, I began to notice a thread.

It came up in conversations, in prayer requests, in the way eyes would glisten at certain hymns or phrases from Scripture.

Regret.

That was the word that kept surfacing.

So many of these folks carried regrets like old letters tucked in a drawer—quiet, ever-present, and deeply personal.

Regrets over things said and left unsaid. Over relationships never mended, dreams deferred, time wasted.

Some of them shared their stories with me. Others didn’t need to. I could see it in the way their heads bowed during the act of confession, the heaviness in their silence.

And so, my preaching changed.

I began to lean into grace.

I began to say, in one way or another, each and every week, “God is calling you to forgive yourself.”

Sometimes I say it directly.

Sometimes I whisper it through a story, or weave it into a psalm, or tuck it into the final benediction.

I do because I believe it’s true. I believe that, as hard as it is to do, God is often screaming at us—not in anger, but in desperation and love—screaming for us to forgive ourselves.

There’s something holy in watching that message land.

Sometimes it looks like a tear.

Sometimes a sigh.

Sometimes it’s the way someone lingers after the service, not to talk, just to sit in the quiet and let that truth settle.

Leading liturgy each Wednesday has taught me that people don’t stop needing the Gospel when they grow old. In many ways, they need it more.

Not the easy gospel, not the one that ties life into neat little bows. But the deep, healing Gospel—the one that reaches into the past and says:

You are still loved.

You are still whole.

You are still forgiven.

And that, I have come to believe, is enough to preach on every single week.