Live Fully, Die Empty

What Jesus’ 33 Years Teach Us About Assignment and Release

By Josh Singleton | Founder and Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

The Lie of Later

In the garden, nothing is on hold.

Seeds don’t delay their sprouting for a better economy. Trees don’t wait until retirement to bear fruit. The soil doesn’t press pause to get its life in order. Everything in creation responds in real time to the conditions around it, stewarding the moment with complete surrender. There is no "someday" in the garden. Only now.

But we’ve believed we’re the exception.

We’ve built a culture around holding back, waiting for a more convenient season to pour out what God has placed in us. We stay in work that drains us. We live lives that feel off. We plan for retirement, hoping that maybe—finally—we’ll get to tend what stirred our hearts when we were children. Or at the very least, get a break from the grind we never questioned. And most people spend 65+ years never truly living—just enduring. Stockpiling potential. Hoarding gifting. Delaying impact.

But not Jesus.

And that alone should make us pause—because if the Son of God didn’t wait to live, why do we?

Jesus lived just 33 years. And He didn’t waste one. He didn’t store up His energy for later. He didn’t postpone obedience until the systems aligned. He didn’t spend decades trying to prove Himself before finally stepping into purpose. From the moment He was baptized, He walked with full clarity, full authority, and full surrender. He poured Himself out as He went. And when the moment came, He didn’t cling to breath. He gave it up. “It is finished,” He said—not because His life had reached its full length, but because His assignment had been fully released.

In the garden, even what appears to stop giving is still giving. A tree doesn’t retire from photosynthesis. It may slow. It may lose limbs. It may no longer produce fruit like it once did. But it still provides shade. It still sequesters carbon. It still anchors the soil and shelters life. Its value isn’t measured by output, but by presence. In this way, even dormancy is holy. Even decomposition feeds life. And maybe that’s what retirement in the Kingdom really looks like—not withdrawal, but compost. A sacred return to the soil, where even in decay, something holy is still being given.

Culture sells us a different vision. You’ve seen the signs—literally. Big, bold declarations: “The legend has officially retired!” “Vacation: the rest of my life!” “Not my problem anymore!” It’s painted as a finish line, a reward, a full-body exhale into a life of leisure. But that message doesn’t come from the soil. It doesn’t come from the Scriptures. It comes from a system that equates purpose with productivity, and then discards what no longer produces.

In contrast, the Kingdom honors the ones who remain rooted, even after the fruit stops hanging from the branch. The ones who stay present. The ones who still shade the younger shoots. In the garden, nothing is ever truly finished—it just changes form, feeding what’s next.

Where Did Retirement Come From?

The idea of retirement as a reward didn’t come from Scripture. It didn’t rise from the soil, either. It came from policy, pressure, and systems designed to maximize labor, not honor legacy. Scripture honors elders as wells of wisdom, not as weary workers in need of escape. But the cultural model we’ve adopted treats the final decades of life not as the pinnacle of purpose, but as a descent into disengagement. True Kingdom rhythm sees these later years like compost in the garden—no longer producing fruit in the traditional sense, but still actively enriching the soil, still serving the next generation by what they release in quiet, faithful proximity. Retirement was never meant to be a pause from impact, but a pivot into deeper surrender. The fruit may shift, but the purpose never ends. It came from systems—systems designed to optimize labor, not honor lives. In the late 1800s, Germany’s Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced one of the first government-backed retirement models, not to bless older citizens, but to strategically clear the workforce for younger men. It was policy-driven, not purpose-driven. By the 20th century, particularly in post-WWII America, the concept of retirement was rebranded and romanticized. Investment firms, corporate employers, and insurance companies packaged it as the grand reward after decades of sacrifice. Media campaigns and cultural messaging echoed the mantra: "Just make it to 65." Retirement became the finish line. Joy was delayed. Purpose was postponed. Rest became a transaction earned through years of toil. And even the Church, often unintentionally, mirrored this model—designing programs for disengagement rather than commissioning elders into deeper spiritual authority and generational transfer.

This shift didn’t happen in a vacuum. It emerged alongside industrialization, consumerism, and the slow erosion of multi-generational living. As families fragmented and elders were no longer seen as wisdom-bearers within the home, society subtly repositioned them as spent resources—honored with plaques, but quietly set aside. Instead of helping them remain rooted in identity, we helped them plan their escape from usefulness. But in the Kingdom, age is never a disqualifier. It's often the proving ground for the most meaningful kind of fruit—legacy.

And maybe the reason retirement is so appealing is because most people aren’t walking in their life-giving assignment to begin with. We’ve normalized calling becoming a career, and mission becoming a job, with health coverage, pensions, and benefits—not because they were meant to, but because we needed a way to survive. Even those entrusted with sacred assignments—missionaries, pastors, nonprofit leaders—often fall into a web of burnout, misplaced identity, and institutional weight. What began as a response to overflow becomes managed in maintenance mode. Ministry gets reduced to machinery. Purpose is buried beneath pressure. And little by little, even the most faithful begin to forget they were never meant to carry it alone. The very thing that once flowed from intimacy becomes performed out of obligation. And in that space, retirement doesn’t feel like an ending. It feels like relief. Not because the work was too hard—but because the work was never truly anchored in identity to begin with.

The truth is, most people don’t want to stop living—they want to stop pretending. Retirement is accepted because the life that preceded it wasn’t sustainable, joyful, or rooted in the soil of true assignment. That’s why the dream of retirement thrives: it promises a break from the burden. But Kingdom living was never meant to be burdensome. It was meant to be fruitful. When we live from assignment, we don’t crave escape. We crave deeper surrender. We don’t long for an end. We long for a harvest.

So maybe Kingdom retirement doesn’t look like what the world calls reward. Maybe it looks more like compost—a second burial of self. A quiet surrender. Not producing fruit that directly nourishes, but still pulsing with unseen power. Still rich with nutrients. Still feeding what’s next. Still being broken down into something beautiful, invisible, and essential. It doesn’t look productive by the world’s standards, but it is profoundly life-giving. Because in the Kingdom, this kind of surrender still multiplies. Still matters. Still moves things. The culture may overlook it. But the soil doesn’t. And neither does Heaven. Even when their names are forgotten, their presence is still felt. Their silent offering becomes the covering others stand on. Their laying down is still a form of lifting up. And in Kingdom soil, nothing is ever wasted—not even the lives that quietly fade from view, yet continue to nourish what’s growing.

So when I say I'm retired, I don’t mean I’ve stopped. I don’t mean I’m coasting or collecting a pension. I mean my life is being poured out—freely, intentionally—as an offering for those bold enough to walk in their Kingdom assignment. I trust the King to provide for the longevity of the assignment, right up until my final breath. I’ve known trial. I’ve made mistakes. But grace has met them all—and turned them into road markers. What once felt like detours now mark a steady path others can walk with confidence, knowing someone has already cleared the brush, faced the darkness, and lit the way forward.

The Fallout of Delay

If we believe we were formed from the soil, then we must also accept the rhythms of the soil. And here’s the truth: seeds were never meant to stay in barns. They’re meant to be buried, broken, and multiplied. When we save them out of fear—when we withhold because we’re afraid of losing—we actually deny the very process that leads to fruit. The same is true of us. We weren’t created to conserve ourselves. We were created to empty ourselves. To live full and die empty. To give back everything Heaven entrusted to us. Jesus said it like this: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

There’s no retirement in the garden. There’s rest. There’s rhythm. There’s dormancy. But there is no such thing as checking out because you’ve finally earned the right to stop growing. And yet, our culture runs people into the ground for decades, just to offer them a version of freedom that often arrives too late. We treat rest like a reward instead of a rhythm. We delay joy until it’s almost out of reach.

In contrast, Jesus walked slowly. He withdrew often. He trusted the Father enough not to rush. But He didn’t wait to begin. He didn’t save the best of Himself for later. He gave all of Himself while He still had time—and He let the harvest speak for itself.

What’s most alarming is how normalized this has become—how even the nonprofit world has been built on the same delay. It’s filled with people who waited until retirement to finally give—to finally serve. People who worked for 40 years in systems that drained them, only to reach the end and hope that doing good might restore something that was lost. They bring their energy, their longing, their hope—but also their exhaustion and confusion about who they are and why they’re here. And instead of healing them, most nonprofits take advantage. Not maliciously, but by default. They’re underwater themselves. And so, in the absence of alignment, they welcome whoever is willing, regardless of whether they’re rooted. It’s survival, not stewardship. And it keeps the cycle going.

In a desperate need to survive, they welcome the help. In a deeper need to feel useful, these retirees overextend. And together they form a system of co-dependency—a cycle where burned-out organizations rely on those who never truly lived their assignment, and those same people bring their cultural understanding of worth into a world that was meant to operate through assignment, not anxiety.

The nonprofit world was meant to be the garden—where things grow from rest, where identity comes first, and where fruit is the overflow of being rooted. But too often, it mirrors the very grind and culture that broke people in the first place.

And I see the result every time I walk into our local hardware and big-box stores.

Men and women, retired from decades of work and responsibility, now pushing carts or scanning shelves—not because they need the money, or maybe they do, but because they don’t know what else to do. The grind has ended, but the restlessness hasn’t. The doing stopped, but the ache to feel seen, useful, and alive never went away. You can see it in their eyes—subtle, quiet, lingering. A low-grade disorientation that comes from having been needed by the world but never truly known by Heaven.

Their identity was built on being available to others. Providing. Managing. Fixing. Sacrificing. For years, they showed up for everyone else—jobs, kids, institutions—but no one ever helped them discover who they were beneath all the roles.

Now they walk the aisles not just to pass the time, but to feel again. To feel busy. To feel necessary. To feel real. Some fill their calendars with church programs, board meetings, and service hours. Others retreat, quiet and numb, unsure how to live without a name tag or a deadline. They were called reliable, generous, hardworking. But they were never called into their Kingdom identity.

So they substitute tasks for purpose. Movement for meaning. Noise for knowing. And what was meant to be a life poured out becomes a life quietly put on pause.

This is not failure. This is fallout.

Fallout from a system that taught us to produce before it taught us to be. Fallout from a culture that told women to serve everyone else before serving what was inside them. Fallout from a world that told men to carry weight without ever asking where their roots were planted.

But Heaven never forgot their assignment. It’s still waiting to be picked up.

The Call to Be Poured Out

I can’t help it—this is where my mind goes. I’ve seen too much in the soil to ignore what’s really happening. The senior centers, filled with games like Mexican Train and Rummikub, offer distraction in place of purpose. And while there’s community and laughter, I can’t shake the question: Is this what it comes to? A life reduced to passing time instead of releasing purpose? It feels like we start life playing games and, if we’re not careful, we go out the same way—hoping these endless days of distraction keep the ache from surfacing. But every time I bring produce into that place, I feel the weight. It’s not just to nourish bodies—it’s to reanchor my own assignment. To remind me that culture will gladly entertain us until our last breath if we let it. That what looks like care can quietly lull us to sleep. And the process we’re part of—the one that grows and gives freely—radiates in that space. It carries proximity and presence, and it wakes up something long buried. To the long life, prolonged by medication. Keeping people alive on the outside, but lulled asleep on the inside. There’s breath in their lungs, but silence in their spirit. The body continues, but the purpose was shelved years ago. And we call that mercy. We call that good care. But it’s not life if it’s detached from assignment. It’s maintenance. It’s survival. And deep down, I believe many of them know it. That’s why they light up when they see the garden’s harvest. Not because of the tomatoes or the squash, but because something in them remembers. Remembers the dirt. Remembers the life they never got to live. Remembers that they were meant to grow something too.

And on the other table—right across the room from the fresh produce—sits a pile of donations from the local grocer. Sweets. Cakes. Cookies. Pastries just past their sell-by date. Out of sight, out of inventory, now passed along to those who are already battling diabetes, high blood pressure, and the slow erosion of vitality. Most of them know it’s not good for them. But who are we to withhold the simplest joy? That’s the unspoken logic. That if life has become dull or limited, a little sugar might bring a little light. But deep down, we know it’s not light—it’s a slow spiral. One they can’t always control. One that feels justified when life itself isn’t satisfying enough.

And all the while, the grocer waves its banner of good works, proud of its generosity, celebrated for its “donations.” But it’s not generosity. It’s convenience. It’s offloading overproduction that would’ve otherwise gone in the dumpster. It’s not feeding the hungry. It’s quietly reinforcing the cycle—passing along what they can’t sell to those who can’t say no. Because no one ever asked why these people are still hungry. Not just for food, but for meaning. For aliveness. For something real. It’s not really about dessert. It’s about longing. About what we reach for when nothing else is waking us up.

And this is where we have to be honest—not just about the grocers, but about ourselves. Because the Church has done the same. So have nonprofits. We've partnered with systems that were never surrendered, just sanitized. We've accepted support from institutions that look generous but don’t know the soil. And in doing so, we’ve reinforced a form of care that meets the surface but misses the soul. We’ve kept people alive but not awake. Busy but not burning. We’ve offered programs instead of presence. Services instead of assignment. Good intentions without good roots.

But Kingdom work demands more than optics. It demands a return to the garden. To the pace of planting. To the honesty of pruning. To the conviction that the work of Heaven cannot be outsourced to convenience. It must be grown slowly, sacrificially, and with Spirit-led integrity.

Jesus modeled this perfectly. He didn’t partner with Rome to increase His reach. He didn’t align with the Pharisees to gain influence. He didn’t water down truth to gather more followers. Every step He took was rooted in obedience, not opportunity. Every partnership was forged in prayer, not pressure. He never bartered with systems to make the Kingdom more palatable. He lived fully surrendered, even when it meant walking alone. Even when it meant going to the cross.

So if we say we’re following Him, we can’t just accept what’s handed to us because it looks helpful. We can’t keep saying yes to donations, resources, or partnerships that feed cycles He came to break. We must ask, Does this grow people? Does this keep them awake? Does this lead to real fruit? Because if it doesn’t, it may be easing our burden, but not aligning with our assignment.

And I refuse to let that be my story. I won’t wait until I’m 65 to finally live and be poured out. I won’t give my strength to systems and offer God my leftovers.

There’s not a part of me that I can’t give to this project until the end of my days through this assignment. My energy, my gifts, my story, my body—they all belong to the One who sent me. And I give them freely. Because this isn’t about me. It’s about the ones being born today. The ones who will carry future seeds. The ones who will pick up the mantle long after I’m gone. I don’t fear their deployment. I urgently usher it in. On behalf of my own short timeline, I celebrate theirs. I live with joy, knowing this work will outlive me. This garden, this Kingdom assignment, this slow and sacred way—it’s bigger than my lifespan. And that’s the point. I’m just one seed. One layer in the soil. One branch in a story that keeps growing.

Assignment living means I walk with reverence for those who came before—those whose blood was spilled, whose cries reached Heaven, whose hope remained even when their eyes never saw the fruit. I don’t honor them with monuments. I honor them with movement. Their prayers echo in our obedience. Their longing is fulfilled every time we say yes. Every step we take in the soil is a fulfillment of someone’s cry. This Kingdom crossed oceans, burned through borders, and it still spreads with a fire that will never cease. Because the assignment is still alive. And the flame will never go out.

My assignment is to link arms in the Spirit—with those God reveals, and with the King Himself—and reclaim hearts that have been neglected. Hearts reduced to margins. Measured by output. Used up and discarded. Forgotten by systems. But never forgotten by Heaven. I choose to stay rooted in the King. Rooted in a well that never runs dry. Not for my own sake. But for the ones who come after us. The ones who will carry the torch of an ever-increasing Kingdom.

Are you storing what was meant to be sown? Are you waiting for permission to pour out what God has already said is good? Are you trying to stretch a life you haven’t fully lived?

Because Jesus didn’t live long. He lived full. And He died empty.

That’s the goal.

So may we stop waiting for the perfect conditions. May we stop living like life is a rehearsal. May we stop treating calling like a retirement plan. And may we plant ourselves fully—like Jesus did—so that when our moment comes, we won’t be grasping for more time, but releasing one last breath, confident: It is finished. I spent it all. I held nothing back.

And remember—this was never about growing up into your purpose. You were born with it. Finished at conception. Formed with intention. Sent with assignment. Like a seed split open underground, you were already carrying everything Heaven needed to release through you. You don’t need to become more important, more visible, or more ready. You only need to be rooted—so your capacity can stretch, your gifts can deepen, and your life can give back what it was always designed to give.

And if you need proof of what happens when we delay, look no further than the grave. It is full of unwritten books, unspoken truth, unplanted gifts, unsung songs, unreconciled relationships, and unrealized callings. The grave has inherited what was meant to change the earth. Not because people didn’t care. But because they waited. They held back. They never truly believed they were already carrying something sacred.

Don’t let the soil of death receive what the soil of life was meant to multiply.

Start now. From the ground up. Because the soil’s not waiting. And neither should we.