Listening to the Giants

David Brainerd died at the young age of 29. Early death in itself is not unusual, but might the young missionaries’ death been preventable? Jonathan Edwards (author of Brainerd’s diary) explains, “Another imperfection in Mr. Brainerd, which may be observed in the following account of his life, was his life, was his being excessive in his labors; not taking due care to proportion his fatigues to his strength.” Yet I would encourage the reader to not be too critical of Brainerd’s imperfection. I believe there are three reasons for Brainerd’s recklessness. Life was short at that time. I have dealt with this issue in a previous post, addressing the grim realities for John Calvin and most humans in the last two millennia.   “It is hard for the 21st century Christian to truly grasp the regularity of death for the 16th century person. Most children did not make it to adulthood (Calvin’s only son died two weeks after birth) and therefore, time for Calvin was against him an...