"I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor 2:2)
This verse is astonishing, when you think about all the varied things Paul did, in fact, talked about.
There must be a sense in which "Jesus Christ and him crucified" is the ground and sum of everything else he says. He is pushing us to see our lives with a single focus, and for the cross of Christ be that focus.
You don't have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. but you do have to know the few things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don't have to have a high IQ. You don't have to have good looks or riches or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead, you have to have a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things - or one great all-embracing thing - and be set on fire by them.
This portion which Pastor John Piper wrote certainly consoled me. Making one's life count doesn't rest fundamentally on one's gifts, talent or social background. But of course, I have to admit, that the main issue is whether (you and) have that singleness of purpose and how much are we driven by it.
Depending on your answer, a dream will end up as a tragedy or a tragedy will end up as a dream.
This case below illustrates how a tragedy will end up as a dream, if the dream was to pour out your life for Christ and be with Christ in the end.
In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured out it out all for one 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 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 ... No that is not tragedy. That is a glory. These lives were not wasted. And these lives were not lost. (For) "Whoever loses his life for my(=God's) sake and the gospel will save it."
And this case below illustrates how a dream will end up as a tragedy.
Consider a story from the Feburary 1998 edition of Reader 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 I read it and 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 life , before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collect shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgement: "Look, Lord. See my shells." That is a tragedy. And people today are trying to persuade you to embrace this dream. Don't buy it. Don't waste your life."
Ok. As a pastor who dislike the idea of retirement, perhaps Pastor John Piper presented the last case with some exaggerated imagination but here he challenges our perspective of dream and tragedy. The world defines them in one way and God defines them in another.
Reading this made me wonder if I have been coasting through life, going through the motion without that single passion burning in my life. I know it's a problem if it is but I know I am not facing this problem alone. He will be with me and that will be enough.
[italicized words extracted from Pastor John Piper's "Don't waste your life"]
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