Maybe not by Genesis standards, but by just about anyone else’s, Irene Trask died “old and full of years.”

In writing about people for my job, a week rarely goes by that I don’t I run across someone whose record of faith inspires me.

This week it was Irene Beulah Trask, who died Wednesday at 106-years-old.

Irene was a Bartlesville resident, and a longtime dedicated member of Adams Boulevard Church of Christ there.

Her son, Jim Sturges, 80, told me that whenever someone would ask his mother about her longevity, and the active life she pursued well into her 100s, she always had the same reply ready:

“‘Do what the scriptures teach — how to think, how to act, how to love. Just do what (the Bible) says.’ That was her No. 1 secret.”

One of Irene’s favorite things to do in following that was helping prepare the church’s Wednesday evening meals.

As recently as age 104, she was still doing it.

“The type of person who believed you didn’t ever miss church,” as her son put it, Irene was at every service until a little over a year ago, and since then, in a nursing home, she attended services there.

Before I hung up, Jim wanted to add something: About his mother’s commitment to the Lord, he said, “I’m the same way. It’s all that matters. Because, you know — we’re not going to be here long.”

Later, it struck me: how coming from him, that’s a remarkable sentiment.

If Jim feels that way — a man whose mother was born before World War I, the Titanic and, very nearly, Oklahoma statehood, which she just missed by two months — then the rest of us, who probably won’t live even close to 106 years, should take his words to heart.

And maybe we can even do the same with Irene’s example.

A legacy of faithful service as guided by devotion to scripture would not be a bad thing to leave behind.