Revival
Of course it’s not going to happen,
but then again, you never know;
God has granted wilder miracles,
though perhaps, not many. This
is the cycle of love and apathy,
hope and fear, trust and the urge
to run. After we ended, revival
swept through our little college
town like nobody’s business.
Suddenly everyone and their
father was getting saved—even
you, it seems. Of course, it makes
sense: the promise of forgiveness
we all so desperately need calls
our brokenness to the pews.
I quote John and you quote
Isaiah, and suddenly we are
just two sinners who have been
forgiven. I wonder if you’ve read
1 Corinthians 13, you know, love
is patient, love is kind, all that fluffy
nonsense that meant nothing
to us in the empty chapel
on that dead night in February;
God was absent, and yet it seems,
He’s staked a claim from Kentucky to
Pennsylvania, wherever we call home.
Of course, we all want what is good
until we don’t: repentance without
forgiveness, redemption without
the cross. Christ was so afraid
in the garden of Gethsemane
that His sweat was blood.
Sunday is coming, and I wonder
if I’ll find you in the grotto
behind the chapel, praying
to a God that was once just
my own, or if you never bought
into any of this in the first place.
2 thoughts on "Revival"
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Wow! So impressed by the skill and seriousness and toughness of this poem. Flannery O’Connor would approve.
A very well-thought out poem. It goes beneath the surface. Very good!