Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. – Isaiah 65:20

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 8, 2017): Isaiah 65

On January 26, 2016, Abe Vigoda died. Maybe I should rephrase that. We think that Abe Vigoda died on January 26, 2016. Who knows, maybe the character actor is still alive and living it up on some remote island. Vigoda reportedly died in his sleep of natural causes less than a month before his 95^th birthday. The confusion? Abe Vigoda was the victim of more fake death announcements than maybe anyone else in history. The guy was always dying – and yet never seemed to be really dead. Writing a death announcement for Vigoda always appeared to be a futile effort. And reading one always brought up questions about whether or not there could be truth to the report. Even as I write these words, I have to admit that I did a quick search just to make sure that the actor had really passed away.

Still, almost 95 seems to be a full life. But then again, life seems to be lengthening. Between my wife and I, we have had three grandparents live past the century mark – my wife’s Grandfather died at 102, as did one of my Grandmothers. My other Grandmother, currently 102, is still alive and beating the family at Scrabble any chance that she gets. This feels like it is something new.

But reading Isaiah, maybe this is something to be expected and surpassed. If we are looking for biblical evidence of long life here on this earth, this might be the passage. Isaiah does not seem to be speaking of eternal life in heaven, but something different. Genesis appears to limit our days to one hundred and twenty years. “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3). Isaiah seems to overwrite the Genesis prohibition with a promise that someday the long life that seemed to exist for the earliest people in the Bible would return. In that day, no child would live for just a few days and then die. A child would still be young at one hundred, and expected to live much longer.

Currently, we know that life expectancy is rising. But what we sometimes fail to see is that it is increasing on two fronts. Infant death, once common, is becoming rarer. It still happens, but its frequency has been significantly reduced. It was actually infant death that dropped life expectancy rates of previous generations. There have always been long-lived people, but childhood death was also an all too unpleasant reality.

But we are also extending life on the other end. More people are living past the century mark than have ever lived that long before. Maybe this is the seeds of the beginning of the longevity that Isaiah saw in the future. A time when death, at any age, became rare, and we all learn what it means to live life to the full.     

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 66