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           Time Magazine a few years ago carried an article of the latter years of billionaire Howard Hughes.  If the story is to be believed, it is one of the most tragic ever told.  It tells a story of 15 years of seclusion, loneliness, boredom, and drug addiction.  For most of that time, his only entertainment was watching old movies on his private screen.  His primary food was chicken soup, and his only associates were people who were paid to be with him.  He neglected his appearance until his hair and beard reached to his waist, and his fingernails were two inches long.

           A summary statement of the article said, “For all his power, he lived a sunless, joyless, half-lunatic life… a virtual prisoner walled in by his own crippling fears and weaknesses.”  Here was a man who could go anywhere he wished and buy anything he wanted.  The problem was that he could not think of any place he wanted to go or anything he wanted to buy.

          The joy of life was exhausted fifteen years before the “party was over.”  He ran out of purpose.  He ran out of friends.  He ran out of enthusiasm.  He ran out of health, and finally he ran out of time.  Poor man – he ran out of just about everything but money, and that’s a small consolation for a bored and lonely man.

          It will probably never get written up in Time magazine, but we need to know that the same thing can happen to any person.  It could happen to you and me.

          And yet we need to know that Jesus can make a difference in our lives.  Jesus’ contribution to our lives should never be overlooked.  It needs to be emphasized a great deal.  When we live with Him and for Him, when we put into practice those things that He lived and taught, then life is not a down-hill proposition.  You don’t start out celebrating with the best and end up existing on the worst.  He turns all of that around, so that anywhere along the way we can say, “The best is yet to be.”

          Any person in his right mind would like to live that way.  We want our lives to constantly increase in fullness and meaning, and quality, so that the best is still waiting for us at the last!  How does this happen?  How does that kind of life come about?  Invite Christ in, implement His teachings, and He will work miracles just as He did in the past.