Don’t waste your life
In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old herself, and serving at Ruby’s side. The brakes on their car failed, it went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly.
John Piper asked his 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 … I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from Reader’s Digest , which tells about a couple who took early retirement when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. 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 … Don’t waste your life.”