How do you train a 20-something medical school student to feel genuine empathy for senior citizens? Enter "The Age Man Suit." Consisting of ear-protectors that stifle hearing, a yellow visor that blurs eyesight and makes it hard to distinguish colors, knee and elbow pads which stiffen the joints, a Kevlar-jacket-style vest which presses uncomfortably against my chest, and padded gloves, the Age Man Suit, which weighs around 10kg, has been custom-made to simulate the physical consequences of old age.

Dr. Rahel Eckhardt from Berlin, Germany helps strap the suit onto the med students as she tells them, "Welcome to old age." She says, "My aim is to turn young energetic people into slow, creaking beings, temporarily at least. That way they will I hope, develop a feeling for what it's like to be old." Eckardt argues that there is a huge disconnect between large sections of the medical profession and their elderly patients, as well as a desperate lack of doctors willing to go into geriatric medicine.

"Rather than a PowerPoint presentation, this is the best way of giving them a real idea of what it's like to be old," she says, "and only once we have their empathy can we really begin to win students round to becoming interested in old people as patients."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Empathy; Sympathy—Of course this doesn't just apply to how we treat the elderly. Stepping into someone's "body suit" or trying to empathize with their life and situations, helps us deal with conflict, friendships, and marriages. (2) Christ, incarnation of; Christmas—Christ's birth isn't just about one human putting on another human's body suit. He was the eternal God who put on a limited, flawed, clunky human body suit.