When Wonder Breaks Through
Rembrandt, Adoration Of The Shepherds, 1646
In my last blog post, one of my readers, my faithful friend Bill Rowley, mentioned he wanted to hear more about the “quiet revival” going on. He confessed he knew God could be doing something new, but frankly, it’s “difficult for me to see it.” I get it. Things are a mess out there. And revivals have often been announced, then fizzle.
I remember as a young graduate student, while studying the literature and culture of the nineteenth century, bumping into the Millerites, a group led by William Miller, who stated confidently that "I believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ is near, even at the door, even . . . on or before 1843." He was imagining revival on the order of the Great Awakening that earlier had swept the young nation. But the Millerites returned to the village in humiliation. It led to what was called the Great Disappointment. That’s the way we sometimes feel when we announce a revival. Be careful, we tell ourselves.
But I’m going to risk it. I think there is indeed a quiet revival cropping out in a number of places. I suppose we have to ask what we are looking for. Huge numbers? The felt presence of the Holy Spirit sweeping across our lives like a fierce wind, a new Pentecost perhaps? A spiritual movement that seems to stir the cultural changes we long for? Have we seen such things in the Asbury revival? Did we see them in the Charlie Kirk memorial where some 150,000 people gathered to worship Jesus? Do we see them as young people flock to the Catholic Church in my region? Do we see evidence in our day-to-day lives, something like “God spottings,” as my dear friend Tim Smith likes to call them? Is it possible these things add up to revival?
I have been writing and teaching about a sort of movement among some intellectuals I admire and appreciate. I’m thinking about David Brooks conversion statement in The New York Times, “The Shock Of Faith: Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be.” Or there is the striking book just published called Against The Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth. I hope you take note of this amazing writer. Or there is the ever-provocative Rod Dreher in his recent Living In Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. You can find all this reading and more in the Reading section of my blog site. Be warned though: This reading may just shake you to the core. You may come away saying, yes, some shift is surely taking place. Something new is happening.
Let me be clear about something. As we watch what we may call a revival emerging, I’m not talking about politics or ideology. If politics take over, revival is dead. It’s much deeper than that. When revival happens the Spirit is on the move. The Spirit is not watching out for the polls to determine whether it is real. Revival is when our eyes are suddenly opened to dazzling dimensions of reality we’ve been missing for a long time. It will come in what I call moments of illumination. When we suddenly find ourselves walking the road with Jesus, as happened on the road to Emmaus, we are struck with wonder. The world opens up in splendor. There is something bigger going on. That’s revival.
The Advent season opens up the possibility for revival. I am hoping this year to read these familiar stories—the shepherds, the stars, the baby in a manger, the pondering mother Mary—in startingly fresh ways. I hope, for myself and our world, that I open my eyes to be struck with wonder. As the shepherds looked up, we can hear them saying, wow, something new is happening! Heaven and earth are breaking open. Something earth-shattering is going on that changes our whole story.
After waiting so long under the heavy weight of our secular, materialist culture, this is what we’re longing for, isn’t it? This is what we’ve been missing. Wonder, mystery, beauty are startingly apparent when God visits us once again, and now, if we can believe it, here it is in the person of this holy child. As we focus our eyes on this baby Jesus, yes, revival may be on its way. Maybe it’s already here.