Don't Waste Your Life

I bet you didn't know John Piper liked rap.  ;-)

Welcome to my blog!  I'm Ian, and this is where I'll be talking about my missions trip to Japan.  If you're here, you probably know me personally, so I won't give a long introduction (at least, not now).  The name "Pillar Held Firm" comes from Psalms 75:3: "When the earth and all its people quake, it is I [God] who hold its pillars firm."  It's very comforting that even if the earth shakes like in the monstrous 9.0 Touhoku earthquake, that God is the one in control.  And if we are rooted in him, he will hold us firm.

So, Japan.  Since you have an internet connection, you already know plenty about the earthquake and following tsunami that hit the eastern coast of the country in March 11.  For about a month previous to that, I was communicating with the Mehns, the missionaries in Tokyo that my church supports.  Things were moving pretty well, and I even got approval from my church's missions team.

Two days later, the earthquake hit.

At first, my plans seemed to hit a dead end.  Then, over the course of the next weeks, things actually fell into place better than before.  Now I'll be heading to Tokyo in one week to work on relief for the victims of the earthquake.  I''m not totally sure what I'll be doing, but I'll make sure to let you know here.

Eventually I'll go into detail on the reasons why I wanted to go to Japan in the first place, but for now the above movie puts it well.  I realized a long time ago that only things that are eternal matter.  With my current plans, I could easily complete engineering school, find a really nice job, and live a comfortable upper-middle class American life.  And there's nothing inherently wrong with that.  But if that's all I want for my life, then it's all been a waste.  Eventually all the money, houses, cars, politics, video games, etc. will crumble to dust, and all that will be left are things that are eternal: God and people.  So I want my focus in life to be those things that will last forever, and I hope that God will use this trip for his glory and to bring people to him.  Because if I can do just one thing to impact eternity for him, then my life will not have been wasted.

And I refuse to waste my life.