Revival

“Will you not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?  Show us your steadfast love, O LORD, and grant us Your salvation…Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” –Psalm 85:6-7, 10 (NEB).

Remember the times, perhaps when you were a child, when your church had a week of revival?  In the country church I attended when I was growing up, “God’s high festival, protracted meeting,”* was held after crops were “laid-by” and people had a bit of time for attending morning and night services at the church for a week or more.  Afternoons were spent visiting friends and neighbors or having them to your house for meals and a visit.  A part of the revival meeting was also “entertaining” the pastor and the visiting preacher and guest song leader, the ‘revival team.’  That entailed seating them at a fully-spread table of good food from the garden and plenty of fried chicken and country ham.  In the afternoons, much talking and discussing of important Bible passages and prayer for the unsaved of the community were a part of front-porch gatherings as guests sat in the porch swing or straight chairs.  It was spiritual harvest time, and an evangelistic spirit pervaded the whole community.  Denominational lines were temporarily laid aside as people from both Methodist and Baptist churches interacted, attended the revival and “got saved,” as the salvation experience was called.  Looking back on those times of spiritual refreshment, I can see that the prayer from Psalm 85:6 was answered.  It was a time of revival.  Twenty-three responded in faith the week of the revival when I became a Christian.  Revival was followed by rejoicing—a natural order for God’s visitation among the people.  Is it any wonder the Psalmist saw Love and Faithfulness personified, meeting, and Righteousness and Peace, likewise personified, kissing each other?  “God, will You not revive us again?”...Yes.  The LORD will give what is good” (85:6a, 12a).  –Ethelene Dyer Jones

[*’God’s high festival, protracted meeting,’ is a quotation from Byron Herbert Reece’s poem, “Choestoe,” c1944.]