In chapter five of Soul Salsa, Leonard Sweet emphasizes the importance of being a lifelong learner. He referred to his friend Jansen, who read everything he could get his hands on, sometimes more than once. He aerated his mind with the complete works of St. Augustine at least ten times. Leonard says, "Jansen died my favorite death. He died after contracting a disease from the dust of old books."
In the chapter "Make A Moment" Sweet says, I want to age like Billy Graham has aged. With every passing year he has gotten better, more forgiving, more loving, more global, more grand.
In an interview late in the 1990's a Parkinson-afflicted Graham demonstrated how optimal our state of spiritual functioning can be when our bodies are at their least optimal. Graham said, "I believe the overwhelming message is the grace and the love and the mercy of God, and that's what I emphasize a lot more than I did in the earlier years.
I think the Lord just gradually changed me as I studied the scriptures. I began to see how much of the emphasis is on God's love and mercy and grace. I'm not going to heaven because I'm good. (That was the Pharisee's mistake). I'm not going to heaven because I preached to a lot of people (That is a mistake a lot of preachers make). I'm going to heaven because of God's grace and mercy in Christ at the cross. And that's a free gift from God to me."
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