One of the pleasures of lockdown is the opportunity to play family board games. We dug out a very old box containing the Catholic Family Bible Game, which contained questions like the following:
According to Proverbs, “The glory of young men is their strength, and the dignity of old men is _________________.” (a) weakness (b) grey hair (c) experience
Would you have got the right answer? Did I? (I’m not telling.)
The correct answer is, in fact, (b): “The glory of young men is their strength, and the dignity of old men is grey hair.”
I checked Proverbs 20: 29 to make sure and my copy of the RSV Catholic Edition had “The glory of young men is their strength, but the beauty of old men is their grey hair.”
Either way, I reckon it’s a pretty good proverb.
But perhaps it’s the dignity rather than the grey hair we should be focusing on at the moment. A dignity that’s all too easily forgotten when people become statistics.
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