Don't Waste Your Life

John Piper quotes to let settle in this week:

"I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the 1998 Reader's Digest: A couple 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. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: 'Look, Lord. See my shells?' That is a tragedy."

"For me as a boy, one of the most gripping illustrations my fiery father used was the story of a man converted in old age. The church had prayed for this man for decades. He was hard and resistant. But this time, for some reason, he showed up when my father was preaching. At the end of the service, during a hymn, to everyone's amazement he came and took my father's hand. They sat down together on the front pew of the church as the people were dismissed. God opened his heart to the gospel of Christ, and he was saved from his sins and given eternal life. But that didn't stop him from sobbing and saying, as the tears ran down his wrinkled face--and what an impact it made on me to hear my father say this through his own tears--"I've wasted it! I've wasted it!"

"This was the story that gripped me more than all of the stories of young folks who died in car wrecks before they were converted--the story of an old man weeping that he had wasted his life."