The Diary of a Man Who Would Not Stop Asking

In the autumn of 1745, missionary David Brainerd knelt on the frozen ground of the Delaware River Valley, his tuberculosis-racked body shaking with fever and prayer. His journal entry from that season reads like a man wrestling with the Almighty Himself: "I hardly ever so longed to live to God and to be altogether devoted to Him." For months, Brainerd had preached to the Lenape people with almost no visible result.…