With all the bowl games coming at us over this long Christmas-New Year’s holiday week, I have found myself wondering something. Why don’t coaches like Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden retire? JoePa is in his 80s and Bobby is pushing 80. Yet, they hang on.

Brett Farve hangs on as a football player, as does Barry Bonds in baseball. You can think of others.

My question, incidentally, has nothing whatever to do with the win-loss record of the coaches. Paterno took his Penn State Nittany Lions to the Rose Bowl this year, so there may be a tendency to say, “Well, he can still do the job.” Bowden’s Florida State Seminoles went to a lesser bowl, but still had a fair year.

The question, “Why don’t they retire?” has more to do with what is the essence of living for these men.

In his World War II memoirs, “Flights of Passage,” aviator Samuel Hynes tells of a sergeant-major he knew in the war. The man was approaching mandatory retirement and everyone who knew him was concerned. He had no family anyone knew of and he spent all his time — all of it! — on the base doing military stuff. One day, they found his body in the office of his commanding officer. He had ended his life with a pistol.

He was afraid of life after the military.

And that, I offer to you as a proposal just to get the discussion started, is the reason people hang on to their jobs long after they should be handing them off to the younger generation: fear.

Fear of coming home to the family. Fear of having to face who they are when they’re not the coach or quarterback or pastor (or director of missions). Fear of what to do with their time and their lives. Fear of being considered old. Fear of fear.

Fear of life is a real problem.

Anyone who pays attention to these things will notice that when many people retire from jobs that have absorbed their every waking thought for decades, they come home and soon die of what is called “natural causes.” I can’t explain it; I’ve noticed it.

Dan Milham, longtime meteorologist with a local TV station, announced this week that he’s retiring. The newspaper said the station was looking for ways to cut expenses and offered him an attractive buyout, which he took. Milham told his audience, “I’m a photographer. I’ll be taking lots of pictures and trying to supplement my retirement income.”

Well, he has a plan. Good for him.

He’s not like the most foolish person on the planet who says, “I plan to play golf.” Within a few weeks of retirement, he’s bored out of his mind. Golf is a great hobby, but a poor way of life.

When King David reached that certain time in life, he had no plans and got in trouble, big-time. Here’s how we read it in II Samuel, chapter 11. “It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab (his general) and his servants (the army) with him…but David remained at Jerusalem.” The very next verse tells how he’s killing time on the rooftop (a cool place to relax on warm evenings), and spots Bathsheba bathing. The rest, as they say, is history.

He should have had a plan. We get in trouble when we change our life-patterns with no plan.

I hear pastors say, “I’m going to retire and write a book.” Or “write my memoirs.” I don’t say anything, but what I think is, “If you’re not writing now, you are not suddenly going to start writing as soon as you retire.”

Get started now. (That’s why the Lord and Al Gore created the internet.)

Politicians say, “I’m retiring to spend more time with my grandchildren.” That one always makes me laugh. Exactly how much time are we supposed to think he’s going to spend with the little ones? I can say for a fact that my eight grands (who range in age from 6 to 19) do not want Grandpa around 24/7. An hour a day would suffice for them and for me, too.

The Winter Bible Study for Southern Baptists this month is the Old Testament book of Exodus. If we get nothing else from this wonderful book which is laden with spiritual and practical lessons, let’s notice that when God called Moses as Israel’s deliverer, the man was eighty years old! And he served for the next 40 years.

So, Coach Paterno, Coach Bowden, and the rest of us — just because you retire from one job does not mean you’re through living. In fact, it could be the best thing that ever happened to you.

“The first thing in all progress,” said George MacDonald, “is to leave something behind.”

So, if we are unwilling to leave the past behind, if the job we have now won’t turn us loose and we can’t unfasten its grip, we do not make progress.

Afraid to let go? Exactly. Face the fear. Take the risk. Be willing to start anew.

In his wonderful book, “When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box,” John Ortberg tells of Larry Lauden, a professor at the University of Hawaii, who wrote a book about risk. In the chapter devoted to household dangers, we learn that 460,000 people a year are injured by kitchen knives and 100,000 by power saws. We might have expected that, but how about this: 20 Americans a year are strangled to death by drapery cords. And 4,000 of us injure ourselves on pillows.

The point being: no place is totally safe. So, go ahead and take a risk.

Ortberg says for his money, the most dangerous place in the house is “a back-reclining, deeply cushioned, foot-resting little death trap called an easy chair (usually spelled EZ because using only two letters takes less effort).”

Let me close this diatribe with two great quotes, both found in Ortberg’s book.

“This is the true joy of life; the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of Nature rather than a feverish selfish little cloud of ailments complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” — George Bernard Shaw

“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.” –Stephen Wright