At 61, CeCe Winans Turns to Old Hymns and a Renewed Sense of Gratitude

Winans' confidence that the best is yet to come suggests that gratitude can answer the habit of measuring life by decline. She is marking this season with an album of 16 hymns, a devotional book, a generational conference, and a 90th birthday celebration for her mother.

The contrast is quiet but important. Those milestones are public and measurable, while the practices Winans names as the ground beneath them — morning prayer, old hymns, generational connection, and the wisdom of age — are not. That does not make aging painless, and Psalm 103 is not a guarantee that every disease will be healed or that a joyful testimony proves special favor. Loss, weakness, and grief still have their place.

The psalmist's answer is active remembrance: praise God with everything within you, and refuse to forget forgiveness, healing, redemption, love, and good things. Gratitude becomes a way of seeing, not a denial of loss. It trains us to ask what God has been doing all along, rather than measuring the future only by achievement or decline. In ordinary worship, family, and age, we can name specific good things and receive the next chapter with trust.