Saturday, May 10, 2003
Saturday, May 10, 2003
Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving.
As Charles Colson describes it: "Like flood waters, the revival spread through the Hudson River
Valley and on to Chicago, where Dwight Moody was just beginning his work with young people.
Then it jumped the Atlantic to Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, and danced like fire across
much of Europe, then to South Africa and India. There was no elaborate evangelistic
organization. Communication was slow; word had to spread from one prayer cell to the next,
from church to church, from city to city. It was a movement inspired by the fervor of thousands
of Christian laypeople." What were these laypeople doing? They were praying. They were
making contact with Divine energy. An exciting church is a praying church.
(Colossians
4.2
NRSV)
The lay revival of 1858 affected the Western world for half a century. It began with a handful of
people in a small room of the Old North Dutch Church in New York City. As the group grew,
daily meetings were added. Within a few months, 10,000 people gathered daily at noon for open
prayer meetings in New York streets. In two years, 2,000,000 converts entered American
churches.
Dear God, help me to make my life and my church one of prayer. Amen.
