The late Pastor John Piper once spoke to a group of young people.

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 most unreached places. 

Laura Edwards, a medical doctor in the Twin Cities, and in her retirement, partnering up with Ruby.

Both pushing 80, and going from village to village in Cameroon. One day, the brakes gave way, over a cliff they go, and they’re dead instantly. And I asked my people, “Is this a tragedy?”

Two women, almost in their eighties, a whole life devoted to one idea – Jesus Christ magnified among the poor and the sick in the hardest places. And twenty 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?”

The crowd of forty thousand high school and college students sat in stunned silence.

I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 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 the 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!

Author and pastor Mark Clark tells the following story:

I started smoking when I was in the eighth grade. I stopped shortly after I got married when I was twenty-three years old. I smoked for ten years of my life, and I loved it. You could tell me daily I was going to die of cancer – but it didn’t matter. You could warn me, you could work on my behavior. The government puts pictures on cigarette packages of bleeding brains and rotting teeth. But that never deterred me. I would just go into the store and say, “Give me one pack of donkey teeth and one dead brain.” 

You know how I quit? I fell in love with a girl who hated smoking. And over time my love for smoking was trumped by something stronger: my love for her.

So I quit.

That’s the expulsive power of a new affection in action. My tendency toward idolatry didn’t disappear, but the object of my affection shifted in priority. You can’t just tear down idols; you have to replace them with something you love more.

Paul Harvey, in one of his radio broadcasts, “The rest of the story,” told how showing sincere appreciation can change a person’s life. He reported that years ago a teacher in Detroit asked Stevie Morris to help her find a mouse that was lost in the classroom.

You see, she appreciated the fact that nature had given Stevie a remarkable pair of ears to compensate for his blind eyes. But this was really the first time Stevie had been shown appreciation for those talented ears.

Now, years later, he says that this act of appreciation was the beginning of a new life. You see, from that time on he developed his gift of hearing and went on to become, under the stage name of Stevie Wonder, one of the greatest pop singers and songwriters of all time.