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Seventy and Five Years Old: God Still Starts New Chapters

Seventy and Five Years Old: God Still Starts New Chapters

Last updated on: October 17, 2026 at 12:06 pm by Christine Moriarty Field

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Seventy and Five Years Old: God Still Starts New Chapters 2026-10-17T12:06:23-05:00 Christine Moriarty Field

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There is a small detail tucked into Genesis 12 that I skipped over for most of my life.

God tells Abram to leave everything he knows: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee” (Genesis 12:1, KJV). And then, almost as an aside, the writer adds: “and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran” (Genesis 12:4, KJV).

Seventy-five.

The defining chapter of the man we call the father of faith didn’t begin in his youth. It began when most of us would have assumed his story was winding down.

Image courtesy of Unsplash

Scripture keeps doing this

Once you notice it, you see it everywhere.

Moses was “fourscore years old” when he stood before Pharaoh (Exodus 7:7, KJV). Eighty. The forty years before that he spent tending sheep in the wilderness, a long quiet chapter he surely thought was the last one.

Sarah laughed when she was told she would have a son in her old age. And the Lord answered with a question that has echoed down to every woman who has ever thought “it’s too late for me”: “Is any thing too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14, KJV).

Caleb, at eighty-five, asked for the hill country no one else wanted: “lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me” (Joshua 14:10–11, KJV).

And in the temple, waiting for the Messiah, was Anna, “a widow of about fourscore and four years” (Luke 2:37, KJV). She was among the very first to recognize the infant Jesus and speak of Him to everyone who would listen.

It’s as if God wants to make the point again and again: the late chapters are not leftovers.

The lie we tell ourselves after 50

Many women I know carry a quiet belief they would never say out loud. It sounds something like: My important years are behind me. Whatever God was going to do with my life, He has mostly done.

We might feel it after the children leave home, or after a divorce, or after a career ends. We might feel it standing at a graveside. The house gets quiet, and we assume heaven has gone quiet too.

Abram’s story says otherwise. So does Moses’s, and Sarah’s, and Anna’s. The God of Scripture is not finished with people just because the culture around them is.

A new chapter usually begins with leaving something

Notice what came first for Abram. Before the promise, before the blessing, there was a departure. He had to leave Haran.

That is often how new chapters begin for us, too. Something has to be set down. It might be a role we’ve outgrown, a way of relating to an adult child that no longer serves either of us, an old fear about money, or a long-held assumption that love is over for us.

Leaving is hard at 75. It’s hard at 55. But the land God “will shew thee” can only be reached by walking away from the place you’ve settled.

You don’t have to see the whole map

The phrase I love most in Genesis 12:1 is “a land that I will shew thee.” Not a land I have shown you. A land I will show you.

Abram didn’t get the map in advance. He got the next step.

That is good news for those of us who feel uncertain about what our next chapter even is. We don’t have to know the ending. We have to be willing to take the first faithful step and trust the One who already knows the way.

Naming the chapter you’re standing in

Sometimes the first step is simply putting a name to where you are. Are you in a season of healing a relationship with a grown child? Rediscovering who you are? Wondering whether love is still possible? Rebuilding after loss? Looking for purpose in retirement? Getting your affairs in order?

I put together a short quiz for women in midlife that helps name that chapter. It isn’t a spiritual assessment, and it can’t tell you what God is calling you to. But it can give you words for where you’re standing, and words are often where honest prayer begins. It takes about two minutes, and no email is needed to see your result.

Take the “Which Chapter Are You In?” quiz →

Fruit in old age

The psalmist promised that the righteous “shall still bring forth fruit in old age” (Psalm 92:14, KJV). Still. Not once upon a time. Still.

If you are over 50 and wondering whether your best chapters are behind you, remember Abram packing up at seventy-five. Remember Anna in the temple at eighty-four. Your story isn’t over. It may be just about to begin.

Let’s Discuss: What would it look like to take the next faithful step without seeing the whole map?

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