Today’s my birthday, my twenty-fourth birthday: April Fool’s Day. I’ve done a few things in my twenty-four years of existence but when I compare myself to others before me, I fall short. Really short. When I pointed this out to my wife, she replied, “But did they know how to DJ?” If it’s either/or, I’ll leave djing behind in a heartbeat. Check these guy out; different times and places, I know, but seriously: check these guys out.

John Calvin

• By the age of twelve he was a bishop’s clerk. I was just a jerk.
• Soon after, he started college and began taking Latin from one of the greatest teachers of the language. I waited until my senior year of high school to take Latin I. I started college at eighteen.
• By age twenty he had been to two or three different universities and knew Greek. OK, so we’re about even on this point though I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say I know Greek.
• At twenty-three his commentary on Seneca was published. Only things I’ve ever published are right here through WordPress.
• At twenty-four some thought him a heretic for being aligned with reformation-esque sentiment. He fled. Though I try to punk people out in a Reformation spirit, nobody listens and I needn’t flee.

John Gill

• By age ten he had read through the entire Greek New Testament and began teaching himself Hebrew.
• Mastered Latin classics by age eleven. At age eleven, I mastered my BB gun.
• Before his teens, local clergy would stop by and find out what little Johnny thought. Sunday School teachers told my parents what a brat I was.
• He was the first Baptist to develop a complete systematic theology and a verse-by-verse commentary on the whole Bible. I was probably the first toddler to poop on a church sidewalk.
• He was called Dr. Voluminous. Me? Not even a doctor.
• There was a saying in his day “As sure as John Gill is in the bookseller’s shop.” A saying based on me might be, “As sure as Drew is on his laptop.”

Jonathan Edwards

• At eleven he wrote a remarkable essay on spiders. By eleven, I had barely even killed one.
• Started at Yale not even thirteen years-old. Me: Marshall University, age eighteen.
• At twenty, he pastored a church in New York. At twenty, I hadn’t even been to New York, let alone a pastor.
• Around the age of twenty-three he wrote his rigorous and convicting Resolutions. I’m a slacker now twenty-four.

I Am What I Am

What do I take solace in on my birthday knowing that these Johns before me have accomplished way more than I by my age? Djing. Playing records on turntables. Nay!

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:10,

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Twenty-four down? Twenty-four down. Let’s keep moving, working harder by God’s grace that is with us.