Yesterday’s blog about burning the plow and leaving the nets felt like it needed a caveat… But the scriptures I used didn’t offer one so neither will I.

My intense “friend” John Piper whose word on the “prosperity gospel” I shared last week preached a very influential sermon on May 20, 2000, to 40,000 college students. Here’s a portion of that sermon as reported in an article by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, March 20, 2017. I offer this excerpt without further comment and commend the article in its entirety. John said:

You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world.

You don’t have to be smart, or good-looking, or from a good family. You just have to know a few, basic, glorious, majestic, obvious, unchanging, eternal things, and be gripped by them, and be willing to lay down your life for them…

Three weeks ago, we got news at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon. Ruby Eliason—over 80, single all her life, a nurse. Poured her life out for one thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the sick and the poor in the hardest and most unreached places.

Laura Edwards, a medical doctor in the Twin Cities, and in her retirement, partnering up with Ruby. [She was] also pushing 80, and going from village to village in Cameroon. The brakes give way, over a cliff they go, and they’re dead instantly. And I asked my people, “Is this a tragedy?”

Two women, in their 80s almost, a whole life devoted to one idea—Jesus Christ magnified among the poor and the sick in the hardest places. And 20 years after most of their American counterparts had begun to throw their lives away on trivialities in Florida and New Mexico, [they] fly into eternity with a death in a moment. “Is this a tragedy?” I asked…

It is not a tragedy. I’ll read you what a tragedy is.

[From Readers Digest, ] Bob and Penny . . . 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.”

That’s a tragedy.

And there are people in this country that are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it. And I get 40 minutes to plead with you—don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you—don’t buy that dream. . . . As the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account with what you did: “Here it is, Lord—my shell collection. And I’ve got a good swing. And look at my boat.”

I’m reading the book that came after that sermon, Don’t Waste Your Life. I can’t say that I’ve burned all my plows, but I can say that I’m 75 and not retired. A couple of weeks ago I was able to visit with my friend Matthias from Kalimpong, India. His father, founding pastor of a church that will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, is 87 and still going strong. Last month I mentioned (again) Jim Downing, who passed away at the age of 104 1/2, six weeks after completing a ministry trip.

¹²  The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
¹³  They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God.
¹⁴  They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green,
¹⁵  to declare that the LORD is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. (Psalm 92.12 – 15, ESV)