It was the summer of 1995, and the revival spirit had come to Easton. The days were a blaze of August heat that scorched the grass and trees and burned white skin to the color of bronze. Water flowed easily for those who worked and played outside, and every breeze was seized and set upon with a desperation that defied belief.
But if the body ached and burned during the day, at night the spirit yearned for new living. As the sun set, the faithful and their children would shower and change into clean pressed shirts and they'd out for the revival.
The revival! It came every year at this time, reliable as the start of school, as the idle on an '82 Chevy, as the ripening of the summer squash. From the third Sunday of August through the fourth, the revival preacher would arrive with a new word from the Lord and an unpredictable, uncontainable move of the Holy Spirit.
He would begin preaching in the early evening, once the music had stopped and the offering was given, exhorting the people of God to break anew from the ways of sin and return to their first love. Sweat would streak his forehead and soak his shirt under his arms, and as he called out the people would respond with one voice, holy and loud and determined.
There were no tongues of fire in those days, though you wouldn't know it by the people who were there. Women would swoon. Men would faint. Amid the clamor and the shouting of the revival preacher, the children would speak in tongues no one could understand and they would prophesy until peals of holy laughter would roll around those gathered and the church was filled with glory and the sighing of angels' wings.
And now the revival preacher, would grow quiet and earnest. "Are you ready to commit yourself, brother? Sinner, are you ready to come home?" The music returned, soft and pleading until one by one, in the summer's heat, the wandering children found Jesus and the lost came home.
Testimonies came from the revival meetings like bulletins from the front. Little Warren Jameson had come to the Lord on Sunday night. Old Betsy Worthington had received a miracle on Tuesday, when her left leg had been healed and she had danced in the aisle like a young girl again, and let us pray for Old Betsy, as it is now three days later and Satan's attack has left her unable to stand or even get out of bed for three days now.
The Holy Spirit was moving, the messengers said. Come prepared for a tremendous work of God on Sunday night!
And Ystur Redneb listened to it all, and nodded his head, and he asked what the work was that God was doing. Were the elders going to open a soup kitchen in the city? Would there be a partnership going forward with Mt. Zion Holy Tabernacle Baptist Church? Was God raising an army from the church to enter the missions field? People are coming home excited, but what are they excited for, or will this all be another memory in just two more weeks?
To everyone he spoke, he asked the same question. "If this is real, please tell me. Give me a reason to go." And the pastor shook his head to see such lack of faith, and the elders shook their heads at his lack of faith, and the righteous shook their heads at his lack of faith.
And Ystur never did go, and he never knew whether it was all excitement without form or substance
... or if God truly spoke and he simply missed it.
Copyright © 2020 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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