Others like the ultimate gift Features >>
-160.webp)
About the Book
"The Ultimate Gift" by Stovall Jim tells the story of Jason Stevens, a wealthy and selfish young man who must complete a series of tasks in order to receive his inheritance from his late grandfather. Through these tasks, Jason learns valuable lessons about life, love, and the true meaning of wealth. Ultimately, he discovers that the ultimate gift is the gift of giving and helping others.
David Brainerd
Born to a farming family in Haddam, Connecticut, Brainerd soon turned his aspirations to the clergy and a life of study. The early death of his parents, combined with a naturally melancholy personality, caused him to be morose and to fixate on the brevity of life, so that his religious life was characterized by prolonged depressions punctuated by ecstatic experiences of God. He began to study for the ministry at Yale College in 1739. During his first year he showed signs of the tuberculosis that was to end his life prematurely. During the following year, the New Light preaching of George Whitefield and other itinerants such as Gilbert Tennent and James Davenport gained many adherents at the college, including Brainerd, and he became involved in a separate church founded by students. In November 1741 he was reported as saying that one of the local ministers who was a college tutor had “no more grace than a chair.” Determined to snuff out the New Light among the students, the Yale Corporation, led by its rector, Thomas Clap, expelled Brainerd for refusing to make a public confession.
Officially barred from the ministry, Brainerd nonetheless became an itinerant preacher, filling pulpits of New Light sympathizers throughout New England and New York. In the process he gained the admiration of many clergymen, including Jonathan Dickinson, a Presbyterian minister of New Jersey and commissioner of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Dickinson in 1742 first proposed that Brainerd become a missionary. To prepare himself, in 1743 Brainerd went to work with John Sargeant, missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. He was ordained by the Presbytery of New York in 1744. From 1743 to 1747 he ministered to the Indians in western Massachusetts, eastern New York, the Lehigh region of Pennsylvania, and central New Jersey. At the New Jersey Bethel mission (near Cranbury), he achieved his most notable successes. Out of his experiences here came the publication of two installments of his journals that described both the revivals among the Delaware Indians and his own spiritual turmoil and exultation.
Brainerd preaching to the Indians for all of his zeal, however, Brainerd’s constitution could not stand up to the hardships of wilderness living. In April 1747, seriously weakened by tuberculosis, he left New Jersey for the home of his friend Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he died in October.
In 1749 Edwards published An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, drawn from Brainerd’s extensive diaries and supplemented by Edwards’s own commentary. Edwards sought to portray Brainerd as a model of Christian saintliness who manifested his faith in good works and self-sacrifice, expurgating many passages that recorded Brainerd’s depressions and enthusiasms. Over the centuries, this work has achieved international fame, has gone through countless printings, and has inspired many missionaries in pursuing their call.
Minkema, Kenneth P., “Brainerd, David,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 84-5.
This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
what happens when you turn 65
Turning 65 in January has me all fired up to get busy. I am close enough to the finish line that the face of Jesus is coming into sharper focus. This is very exciting and makes me want to pick up the pace. Of course, he is not the least impressed with frenzy. Nor is he pleased with Boomer indolence. What his face says to me is: “I am your rest every day, and there is good work to do every day till you’re home.” One Great Thing God has called me to this one great thing, and his face affirms it every day: “With full courage, now (after 65) as always, let Christ be magnified in your body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). Live now to make much of Christ. Measure everything by this: Will it help more people admire Jesus more intensely and treasure Jesus more deeply? The Bible says, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty” (Psalms 90:10). But of course, “My times are in your hand” (Psalms 31:15). The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. We don’t live one day longer or shorter than God appoints. So at 65, I am still gagging at the pictures of leathery old sunbathers on white shores and green links. For fifteen years, I have thrown hundreds of senior mailings in the recycle bag unopened. Not that I am opposed to saving $0.79 on lunch at Perkins. Just don’t try to sell me heaven before I get there. There is too much hell left to fight. Old Versus Retired Turning 65 has set me to pondering what people have done in their later years. For example, I just received a copy of the first major biography of Charles Hodge in over a century: Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy  (Oxford, 2011). On the first page, I read, When people reach their seventies, they often think their work is done. Not so with Hodge. His last years were among this most productive as he sat ensconced in his study, wielding his favorite pen to compose literally thousands of manuscript pages, which would eventually become his monumental Systematic Theology  and his incisive What is Darwinism ? (vii) So I started poking around on the Internet. Here’s some of what I found (for example, at www.museumofconceptualart.com/accomplished): At 65 Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of England, and for the next five years led the Western world to freedom. At 69 English writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson began his last major work, The Lives of the English Poets. At 69 Ronald Reagan became the oldest man ever sworn in as President of the United States. He was reelected at 73. At 70 Benjamin Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence. At 77 John Glenn became the oldest person to go into space. At 77 Grandma Moses started painting. At 82 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe finished writing his famous Faust . At 82 Winston Churchill wrote A History of the English-Speaking Peoples . At 88 Michelangelo created the architectural plans for the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. At 89 Albert Schweitzer ran a hospital in Africa. At 89 Arthur Rubinstein performed one of his greatest recitals in Carnegie Hall. At 93 Strom Thurmond, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, won reelection after promising not to run again at age 99. At 93 P.G. Wodehouse worked on his 97th novel, got knighted, and died. Dependant Till the End And don’t forget, if you are running this marathon with Jesus, you have a great advantage. God has promised you: “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (Isaiah 46:4). Nothing to be ashamed of here. We’ve been dangling in the yoke of Jesus ever since he called us. At out peak, we were totally dependent. So it will be to the end. So, all you Boomers just breaking into Medicare, gird up your loins, pick up your cane, head for the gym, and get fit for the last lap. Fix your eyes on the Face at the finish line. There will plenty of time for R and R in the Resurrection. For now, there is happy work to be done.
