47 I’d like to speak with David Brainerd in heaven. I want to ask if, through his westward horse rides and evangelistic zeal, he ever thought that auditoriums of 21st-century believers would one day dissect his ardor, describe his fervor as a mere valuable derivative, pleading with bowed heads not to thin their lives as he had. There’s piety in work. There’s wisdom in rest. Brainerd privileged the former. Yet Jesus took naps, knowing that it wasn’t exhaustion, but humanity’s stained hands, that would inflict His fatal blow. He slept through the storms regardless. Piper’s auditorium, echoing, “May we more faithfully steward our time on this earth, Father. Let us retain Brainerd’s passion without squandering decades of ministry. Guide us in sustainability.” My sore throat, supplicating: May I distinguish between the glories of a dense mission and the horrors of a young corpse. Grant me Brainerd’s pace with Piper’s age. I want both, Father. Brainerd’s twenty-nine years, spent with a bloodied handkerchief tucked neatly into a pocket, coughing through benedictions, carrying consumption to converts, closed in a coffin and covered with dirt. A martyr to the Lord, yet perhaps also, in part, to self. moving. I will conjure up projects to fill a free hour, learning guitar and cleaning out my closet during empty afternoons. And where I may teeter to lament my tired body, exhaustion will eventually beat me, like everyone. The horse is going to die. It’ll get battered by missions and dehydrated by sunbeams and wrinkled by age. I’ll be damned if I await its collapse cloaked in the luxury of afternoon teas and evening leisure. My mother often tells me, “You’re happiest when you’re busy.” I’d replace “busy” with “striving.” The juggle of emails and story-writing and overtime hours gives me a rush. They propel me to the next thing. But as I run forward, I glance back over my shoulder to see the premature demise of my expired idols. Their pursuits age well, and yet they made haste to the end with vigor. I remind myself: these tendencies that churn in our guts to do aren’t acquired—they’re inherent. If restlessness will always serenade our days, we ought to capitalize on it. Someday, I’ll have to give an account to the Lord of all I’ve done with my life. My prayer is that I have the humility to fall at His feet rather than spit out accomplishments. I don’t labor to seek God’s favor (that’s a Piper point I will canonize, straight from Paul himself ), but I do find comfort in knowing that He affirms the ant’s work ethic in Proverbs. What makes it through the fire? I can’t carry any of my products with me, en-tote, to the new earth. But there, I’ll be released from my fragile frame and given one anew, able to dance in the expanse of opportunities, never again subjected to the crashing haze of a feeble end. Endurance: inexhaustible.
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