Don’t Waste Your Retirement
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By John Piper
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If you’re 52 and you’ve made a bundle, that’s just fine if you want to quit your job. That is just fine. Call it “retirement” if you want. I don’t like the word, but you can. I get it. So, you quit your job at 52, like Mrs. Puntagorda did, and I’m just pleading that you don’t go collect shells — that you give yourself to something way crazy, crazy for a 52-year-old or a 62-year-old or a 72-year-old. That’s what I’m pleading. I don’t care when you quit your job and call it retirement. That’s irrelevant. What matters is what you do with it.
I was speaking to a group last night about this, and I quoted this wonderful passage from Proverbs:
The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. (Proverbs 4:18)
The Christian life is not moving toward night; it’s moving toward noon. There are no sunset years. There’s only eleven to noon, which means that you don’t have to scramble to bring heaven into this world, which is the entire mindset of the world that’s spending billions of dollars to get you to buy the dream or prepare to buy the dream.
They don’t believe there’s any vacation on the other side of the grave, so you bring it all into this side. You got to. It’s your last chance. It’s your last chance to get the dream, and you look at them and think, “Excuse me? Last chance?” Noon is the beginning of vacation. It’s Friday.
