I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who "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 their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells." At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life—your one and only precious, God-given life—and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: "Look, Lord. See my shells." That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.
(Don't Waste Your Life , John Piper)
Ten challenges ahead for S'pore
1. How to maintain high economic growth and improve living standard?
2. How to convince Singaporeans their lives will get better?
3. How to satisfy transport demands of the next generation?
4. How to stamp out new diseases and keep health-care costs down?
5. How to design job training programmes and wage supplement schemes for low-income older workers.
6. How to get younger Singaporeans to marry and have children?
7. How to support the growing elderly population?
8. How to deal with scarce land resources?
9. How to bond Singaporeans overseas to their homeland?
10. How to ensure Singaporeans of different faiths continue to mix with one another and respect one another's faith?
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