Newsweek has a moving story about Billy Graham and the grace with which he is facing his twilight years. As Graham has grown older, the urgency of worldly events and ideas—politics, legislation, activism, etc.—has seemed to fade, replaced by a call “to soldier on by faith, praying and pondering and sharing what he has come to see and feel and think in the twilight of his life.” From the article:

“All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old,” Graham remarked one day to his daughter Anne Graham Lotz. “And I told him, ‘Well, Daddy, you are now teaching all of us’.” The lesson of age, Anne says, is this: “When you get older, secondary things, like politics, begin to fall away, and the primary thing becomes primary again—and for Daddy, the primary thing is, as Jesus said, to try to love God totally, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.”

And that, in a way, is Billy Graham’s last testament. As his days dwindle, the man whose heyday was consumed with preaching and with presidents is increasingly reflective.

Reading the article, I could not help but think of the chorus from the hymn Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.

What a grace-filled way to approach the end of a life filled with enthusiasm, activism, evangelism, and even the occassional mistake. (Hat tip: It Takes a Church, which has some additional commentary.)