It was a diorama about twelve inches square and nine inches high. It depicted a simply appointed living room with a chair, a carpet, a door, and a woman vacuuming. It was an ordinary scene with absolutely nothing remarkable about it. What made this piece of art so memorable to me was what was going on outside the room.

Outside was a fanciful array of men and monsters of all different colors, sizes and shapes. Their tentacles, arms, legs and eyes were all interwoven and they surrounded the room and the woman doing her chores. Inside was a scene of mundane toil; outside was total chaos.

UPDATE: Here is the work of art described above. Click for a larger version.

That piece of artwork depicted my life at the time. To the casual observer, I was an average guy working an average job living in an average house and driving an average car. My main worries were losing my job, losing my wife, losing my house, losing my car and my dwindling bank account.

Since saving faith was granted to me by God through Jesus, I really don’t worry much about my job or whether I will have enough food or clothing (Luke 12:29-31), nor even about having enough money. Strangely enough, I still identify with this piece of artwork and am still concerned with many things.

The monsters lurking outside my window today are my sins that I don’t want to do, but keep doing (Romans 7:15); my unsaved family (both those who claim to know Christ but produce no fruit and those who overtly deny Him); my friends at church who seem biblically illiterate and apathetic about the Gospel;  people I work with who are trapped in a legalistic religion; and what, if anything, I can do to help bring these people to Christ.

For now I think I will pray about it (1 Peter 5:7), be still, and know that God reigns. (Psalm 46:10)

Surprisingly, this one was not fictional and was written by a respected journalist named Michael Gartner. It is entitled, “A Life Without Left Turns.” If you would like to read the entire article, here is the link. If you would just like a synopsis, read on.

My father never drove a car.

Well, that’s not quite right.

I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

“In those days,” he told me when he was in his 90s, “to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it.”

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:

“Oh, bull___!” she said. “He hit a horse.”

“Well,” my father said, “there was that, too.”

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car.

Another portion tells about his father and mother’s church habits:

My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn’t seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin’s Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish’s two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he’d take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church.

He called the priests “Father Fast” and “Father Slow.”

Later in the account we find out why it is so named.

As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, “Do you want to know the secret of a long life?” “I guess so,” I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

“No left turns,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“No left turns,” he repeated. “Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn.”

The piece ends with his father’s death at 102 years of age.

“I want you to know,” he said, clearly and lucidly, “that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have.”

A short time later, he died.

A man gets married, works hard all his life, has two sons, walks everywhere, doesn’t drive a car, avoids church, lives to be 102 years old, dies peacefully and goes straight to Hell.

If there is nothing more to this life than to live happily, comfortably, healthily and die peacefully, then religion is a complete waste of time and we should just skip church like this man did and go for a walk instead!  His story is an example of how not to live and we should pray that our lives are not wasted as this man’s was. How terribly, tragically sad this story is. Proof that Satan will give you anything you want in this life if he can have you in the next.

But if the Bible is the truth and there is more to our existence than this brief journey we call life, then our purpose must be to never live a life focused on selfish comfort and pleasure. Our true purpose must be to reach those who do not know about Jesus and share God’s gift of eternal life. (I’ll let you in on a secret: most of your friends at church are trying their best to live their lives like the man in this story. If they have retired already, time is running out for you to tell them that they’re wasting their life.)

Here is a truly heartwarming story that Christians should pass around more than the one by Gartner. This one is from John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life.

In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great 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 – even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw  away their lives on trifles. No, that is not a tragedy. That is a glory. These lives were not wasted. And these lives were not lost. “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

Americans spend billions of dollars every year trying to live a life like Michael Gartner’s father. Can you imagine him standing before Jesus on the great Day of Judgment and telling God, “I walked instead of going to church.” Or “I never drove a car and didn’t let my wife make left-hand turns.”

What will you say when you stand before Him?

Please, don’t hold this man’s life up as something to be emulated. His life was a waste. His one and only, precious life was a waste because he refused to know Jesus. Please don’t waste your life like this man. Please!

I had no difficulty falling asleep, in spite of the noise from the neighbors. The sound of thunder in the distance didn’t bother me either. The weather had been perfect all weekend, despite the prognostications of a few pessimistic weathermen, so I expected the storms to pass over yet again. I was wrong.

I woke to an incredibly loud clap of thunder, which was followed by an impossibly bright flash of light, and another crashing sound. The rain was pelting my tent, and was blowing in through the screens. I zipped the windows shut and settled back into bed. The noise of the rain didn’t bother me, and the storm seemed to be moving away. I figured the worst was over. Again, I was wrong.

Within minutes, the intensity of the storm doubled. There was an almost constant flashing of lightning, and the sound of the thunder melded into a single rolling rumble, accentuated at times with loud explosions as lightning struck nearby. That’s when I felt the first drop.

Several others followed it. The wind had picked up and was now blowing the rain up under the fly of my tent and in through the roof screens, and there was no closing them.

My allergies didn’t seem so important at this point and I decided that I had to make a run for the house, about 60 yards away, and the storm was still getting worse. I was, for the first time, starting to get  scared. I tried to avoid the waterfall coming in the top of my tent as I put on a pair of shorts in the corner of the tent. It didn’t matter; I still managed to get a splash of cold water on my face as I put on my shoes. If I wasn’t completely awake before, I was now.

I decided to wait for a lull in the storm to make my run. It wasn’t abating, though, so I decided to just run for it NOW! I took the time to say a quick prayer. I think it was something like, “God help me.”

I unzipped the door to the tent and exited. By the time I re-zipped the door, I was soaked to the skin. I looked toward the light near the front door of the house and started running. I stopped to catch my breath for about ten seconds at a pavilion, which was at the halfway point between my tent and the house.

As I set back out into the storm, a bolt of lightning struck just behind the house. It lit the entire yard in an eerie way that made me think that I wasn’t going to make it. It was almost a surreal experience seeing lightning strike so close. For a fraction of a second it was actually brighter than daylight. I knew then that my fate was in God’s hands. Nonetheless, I kept running.

As I neared the front door of the cabin, I switched my bag from my right hand to my left so I could use my stronger hand to open the door. As I stepped onto the concrete pad in front of the door, though, I got a surprise.

The door opened in front of me. My mother was there holding it open so I could dash in. My wife was waiting there also with a towel for me to dry off. I thanked them both and asked why they were both downstairs in the middle of the night. “We were waiting for you, ” my mom said, “We knew that eventually you had to come in. I’m surprised you stayed out there as long as you did.” It was three o’clock in the morning.

I went to the bathroom, toweled off and changed into some dry clothes. The storm was finally abating outside as I climbed the stairs and got into the nice dry bed that my wife had made for me as I was changing. Before I fell asleep, I took time to thank God for the women in my life who had given me comfort when I needed it. I realized as I was praying that what I had just experienced was a metaphor for heaven.

When life’s storms become too much to bear, God calls us home. When we get home, there will be loved ones there to hold the door for us, God will wipe the tears of the world from our eyes, and Jesus will lead us to a warm and safe place of rest that He has prepared.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Revelation 21:4 NIV

In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. John 14:2 NIV

Below, is the account of Washer’s conversion at the University of Texas in Austin. Please take 15 minutes out of your day to listen to this entire message, especially if you are feeling down or discouraged. Hearing how God worked to bring Paul to Himself is uplifting for all and helps us to know that God will work miracles for those who love him. (Romans 8:28)

He references Psalm 103:15-17 NASB in his testimony.

If your tear ducts haven’t kicked in yet (mine didn’t, but my heart was refreshed) watch this next video. It’s about six minutes long and it is an amazing story of God working His righteous will in the USA and Peru. Like two electrodes in a spark plug, God worked to bring two men close together to do great work for the Lord.

All for the glory of God! Soli Deo gloria!