Dear Friends,
This past Saturday morning I invited
a couple of friends to breakfast. They had never met, but they had one thing in
common. They both had been inducted into the Metropolitan Life Insurance Hall
of Fame.
One had worked in the corporate
office while the other served in the field, and both of them had retired after
having risen to the pinnacle of success within their company.
One was in his 80's and the other, a
member of our church, was in his late 70's, and as I sat there listening to
them share their stories, I thought to myself, how blessed I was to be in
their company.
Both of them could be taking it easy
and enjoying their retirement years doing anything they wanted.
However, both of them have chosen to
be fully employed in Kingdom business. One was leading three weekly zoom Bible
studies, and the other was leading a Bible study as well as being fully engaged
in a number of church ministries.
The only time either one of them
plan to retire is when God takes them home. May their tribe increase.
As I sat listening to them share
story after story, I recalled a message by the famous pastor and writer John
Piper. He had preached it 24 years ago to forty thousand college students at
the Fourth Passion Conference in Memphis Tenn., and it became famously known as
the "Seashells sermon."
The theme of his message to those
college students was, "Don't waste your life doing things that don't make
a difference for the Kingdom," and he concluded his challenge to the
students with a story of two contrasting pairs of people.
I quote from Piper's sermon.
"Ruby Ellison and Laura
Edwards, a nurse and a doctor had spent their lives serving the poor in Africa
in the name of Jesus. One of them had been single all her life. One of them was
married, but a widow by then. In their 80s, they were still serving. They're
driving a car, and their car's brakes give out and they fly over a cliff in
Cameroon and both of them go into heaven and meet Jesus in their eighties after
a lifetime of serving the poor."
"Then, the other couple, and I
can't remember their names. These fifty- somethings who took their early
retirement, moved to Punta Gorda, Florida - which means, by the way, "Fat
Point"-said they devoted themselves to collecting shells and playing
softball and riding their 30-foot yacht."
Piper says, "I asked those
thirty thousand young people, was the death of these two servants of Christ
entering heaven in their 80s through a car crash a tragedy? Was that a
waste?"
They shouted out, "No!"
"Was it a tragedy? I'll tell
you what a tragedy is. Two healthy fifty- some things wasting their lives
collecting shells. That's a tragedy."
"'Look, Jesus, here’s my shell
collection that I gathered for you in the last twenty years of my God-, given
life, not to be wasted on your account.'"
It reminds me of a story I just
heard of a 94-year-old man who had to give up visiting in the nursing home in
which he was living because his legs gave out, and he couldn't get around to
visit.
However, he still carried within the
passion for service, and he proudly announced to his son that he had found a
new ministry. He said, "Dad, I pass out prayer cards with my name and
number, and I tell everyone I see, to call me whenever they need someone to
pray for them and my phone is ringing off the hook."
Unlike my two friends I met for
breakfast and this man in the nursing home, there are many who think they are
living, but who are really dead- they just don't know it because they are
spending their years hunting seashells.
Yours in faith and friendship,
Tom
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