I have said for a long, long time that I would rather wear out than rust out. The reason I feel this way is that life was made for a challenge. Most of us are our best and do our best when we are engaged in a meaningful and worthwhile work. It is too much leisure time that fills the bars and places of amusement. Too much time on our hands produces boredom and robs life of its zest.
George Bernard Shaw expressed my sentiments when he wrote, “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have to hold for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible, handing it on to future generations.”
The person who lives life with this kind of meaning and purpose, this sense of mission, this kind of zest, lives life at its best. Jesus put it this way, “Whosoever shall save his life shall lose it. But whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel shall find it.”
It is by losing our life in a meaningful and worthwhile cause—especially the cause of Christ—that we find life worth living. Stay alive all of your life by being active, dedicated and loyal to the Lord.