Psalms 71: The voice is older, but the witness is unfinished

Psalm 71 lets an older voice speak without treating age as either embarrassment or ornament. The speaker remembers dependence reaching back beyond youth to birth itself and asks that the refuge known across a lifetime remain available when bodily strength fails. Enemies interpret weakness as evidence that God has abandoned him, but the prayer refuses their conclusion and asks for help that would contradict it in practice. Continuing life is then given a purpose larger than self-preservation: the speaker wants to show God's strength to a generation still coming after him. The distinction is deliberate. His own strength is failing, while the strength he wants to declare has not become smaller. The ending gathers instruments, lips, soul, and tongue into anticipated praise. Great troubles remain part of the remembered life, but they do not receive its final sound.