But Wait, Something Is Happening
Jean François Millet, Angelus, 1857
We find in this tender painting a couple coming together in the fields, at dusk, after a long day harvesting potatoes. They are praying. We witness humble reverence here, hands placed together, a sense of silence and stillness, heads bowed. Surely, they are giving thanks for the fruit of their labor, gratitude for work, thankful that God is present in their little space. We can almost hear the bells ringing from the church in the distance. This is sacred ground. An extraordinary God steps into their ordinary lives. This is a place of prayer.
I was rather stunned, though, to read the comments on this painting from a scholar: "There is, however, no religious message to the painting: Millet was simply concerned with portraying a ritualized moment of meditation taking place as the dusk rolls in." “Oh please,” I want to shout? One thinks of the protagonist in Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach: I am “grateful to live in a time when religion has generally faded into insignificance.” Really? Yes, people don’t pray anymore. Don’t you get the message?
As reports from the small chapel on the Asbury University campus have circulated over the weeks, I’ve been asking how we can continue to live with such deep, imbedded skepticism? Often there is no God around to begin with, but if there is, surely he doesn’t step into our lives with radiant presnece. To the skeptics, maybe even to suspicions in my own heart, I want to shout again—but wait, something is happening, right now, in Kentucky, spreading around the country. We better open our eyes. We better wake up from our slumber.
As the dust settles on this revival, we’ll have time to sort out what has happened and why it matters or what it should be called for the record. There are any number of fabulous articles these days reflecting on just these things. But for now, I find myself swept up in sheer delight. Even as God has visited this small chapel, he has visited my heart with refreshing energy.
God has appeared on the outskirts of sophistication. We hear the voices that defy skepticism. We hear them saying, with fresh conviction and urgency that God is here, with us, in this place, right now. We feel peace, they say, even in the midst of all our anxieties. We feel calm, the lifting of heavy burdens of anxiety and lostness and emptiness. We feel an overwhelming sense of joy.
I know these are exceedingly tough times for this generation of young people. These are tough times for all of us. The world seems lost in a moral mush. Where is there any center for what we may call truth? How can we ourselves define purpose for our lives? How can we find sure identities, self-worth, meaning that will endure the next fad? Lift us out of spiritual and personal exhaustion, these young people seem to plead. Free us from the arduous task of self-promotion. Free us from loneliness, spiritual emptiness, depression. Liberate us from the false promises of drugs, casual sex, endless technology, all those things that are letting us down so badly. Give us something more sure than these constant detours and cul-de-sacs we are handed daily.
Maybe the best thing we can learn is that the narrative—so filled with suspicion and angst and disappointment—by which we all live, has been exposed. Skepticism is not the tool we need right now. Skepticism cannot be the final answer. We need faith, peace, surrender. We want joy. What we need is to let go like these young people in the chapel. We desperately need a new narrative. Maybe these unsuspecting students have begun to map out new directions. Maybe we are indeed witnessing new beginnings for our lives and for our world.
As Jesus heals the blind man, miraculously, he calls on his disciples to open their eyes. He’s asking that same question of me right now, asking each one of us. Don’t you see the suspicion of the world seems to drift away like morning fog? Don’t you get it now? Let go. That’s the only way this troubled world will change. Revival is the answer. Prayer is the answer. Maybe we are seeing the signals of something new opening up in our midst. I’m praying it will be so.