Retirement Insights

  Retirement provides us with a rare chance to pause, reflect, and consider the patterns of our lives—the successes, the setbacks, and the quiet work of God in all of it. Recently, our group of retired men benefited from a book report on The Weathering Grace of God: The Beauty God Brings from Life's Upheavals by Ken Gire, a book that uses the Rocky Mountains as a metaphor for life's upheavals and God's grace that transforms them. Gire reminds us that even the most frightening and confusing circumstances can, over time, be shaped into something beautiful. Gire’s insight begins with a simple but profound idea: life’s upheavals—whether death, disease, or disappointment—are like storms in the mountains. The bedrock of our certainties may shake. We feel lost, afraid, even abandoned. “We feel our way in the dark. Until we find each other. We huddle together in the storm. Wet and shivering, but together. And maybe in the end it will be our huddling in the storm that gives us mor...