Even though I’m working on it everyday, chapter three of “Return” is still only 85% complete. I hope to post the installment soon.
Turns out the subject of revival is more involved than I originally assumed. After reading church histories, books, articles, and observing how the mainstream treats revival events, the content created a logjam for me.
That means excess information. And I’m already a wordy guy. “I love your prose,” a reader told me about my last book, “But how about a hundred pages less of it?”
Anyway, back to the subject. Sometimes I think what we label as revivals, especially in the current religious culture, are chemerical events, difficult to quantify, much less, understand. They’re like a mushroom the size of a dinner plate that grows up in your backyard overnight. Why is it there? Is it edible? Is it reproducible? Is it some sort of omen? Can I enter it into the county fair?
So you do what everybody does these days when something appears that defies description: You snap a pic of it with your cell phone, and then post it on social media.
The whole neighborhood comes out to see it. The town paper runs a series on it (It’s—ahem—a small publication). Meanwhile, the mushroom goes viral on the internet. It also ends up on the cover of a gardening magazine.
Then the whole thing is over.
It seems your country neighbors next door have a kid goat named Chewbacca, who wanders into your yard, and eats the ‘shroom.
And so the ending is almost as strange as the beginning.
I suppose authentic moves of God aren’t easily understood. But rigged media coverage, inaccurate word-of-mouth reports, and sensationalism doesn’t make it any better.
Meanwhile, in your backyard, a “normal miracle” continues that will never garner headlines. The grass relentlessly grows, which in cumulative figures, would equal hundreds of feet over decades. The oak tree has stood there since World War Two, a picture of quiet stability. And don’t forget the prize rose bush that has taken so long, with so much focus, before its incredible bloom.
None of those make the news.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come” (Mk. 4:27-29).
Look at the elements of the Kingdom here: the deliberate scattering of seed, sprouting, growing, maturity, harvest, lots of waiting—all ordinary. But we’re not excited by the ordinary, which is why we chase the phenomenal.
There’s nothing wrong with an event that proves fantastic, as long as it doesn’t lead to neglecting the normalcy of daily Christian life.
After all, overnight, ten-pound mushrooms are the exception, not the rule.
