Don't Waste Your Life

Here's an excerpt from John Piper's book Don't Waste Your Life.  I thought this was strong.

 

In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa.  Ruby was over 80.  Single all of her life, she poured it out for one thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick.  Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing 80 years old, and serving at Ruby's side in Cameroon.  The brakes failed, the car went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly.  I asked my congregation: Was that a tragedy?  Two lives, driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ - even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw away their lives on trifles.  No, that is not a tragedy.  That is a glory.  These lives were not wasted.  And these lives were not lost.  "Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it" (Mark 8:35).

 

I will tell you what a tragedy is.  I will show you how to waste your life.  Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader's Digest, which tells about a couple who "took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.  Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells."  At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke.  A spoof on the American Dream.  But it wasn't.  Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life - your one and only precious, God-given life - and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells.  Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: "Look, Lord.  See my shells."  That is a tragedy.  And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream.  Over against that, I put my protest: Don't buy it.  Don't waste your life.