Lyrics from track 3 on my new cd

(Thanks, Dad, for the Amazon gift card.)

Revival
By Robin Mark

As sure as gold is precious and the honey sweet
So You love this city and You love these streets
Every child out playing by their own front door
Every baby laying on the bedroom floor
Every dreamer dreaming in their dead-end job
Every driver driving through the rush hour mob
I feel it in my spirit feel it in my bones
You're going to send revival, bring them all back home

I can hear that thunder in the distance
It's like a train on the edge of the town
I can feel the brooding of Your spirit
Lay your burdens down
Lay your burdens down

From the preacher preaching when the well is dry
To the lost soul reaching for a higher high
From the young man working through his hopes and fears
To the widow walking through the veil of tears
Every man and woman, every old and young
Every father's daughter every mother's son
I feel it in my spirit feel it in my bones
You're going to send revival, bring them all back home

Finally...

After only 1 month, I have the internet. I can now post.

So here's what I'm reading from which to draw my unoriginality:
Wanderings: History of the Jews by Chaim Potok
Exodus
Acts

As I read these three books together, I can't help but be overwhelmed by the history of the Jews-- "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (Exodus 19:6) You never really hear much about Moses' father, but that doesn't stop Moses from saying, "My father's God was my helper; he saved me from the sword of Pharoah." (18:2) Peter says in Acts, "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus." (3:13) I am reminded of Walter Bruggeman, who says, "In listening, moreover, Israel knows it must cease to listen to the voice of Pharaoh that defined reality in terms of brick quotas. In listening, Israel comes to the startling, dangerous conviction that its life consists not in bricks for the empire, but in acts of neighborliness whereby Israel replicates Exodus for its neighbors." (The Church as Counterculture, p. 45)

Chaim Potok says of this history, "It was a history rich with ideas, hallowed by martyrs, characterized by a familial intimacy with God and a tenacious fixing of the eyes upon the promised future." (p. 2) My prayer devotional Bible says of Acts 1:14, "Waiting is not passively allowing time to pass until the promise comes; it is a vigorous laying hold of what is promised, a living into the future."

The Israelites live continually with one eye upon the past and the other upon the future. They are a people who know where they've come from and where they're going. They live into that future. As Peter says to the crippled beggar, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." (Acts 3:6) Walk into the future. Walk with one eye upon the risen man Jesus and one eye upon the promise of new life to come. Walk into a future that is already but not yet. Walter Wink says, "Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present." (The Powers that Be, p. 185)

May we learn from the Jews to be ever aware of our history...our history of a God who says, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 13:13-14) A God who, as Tim Green says, promises a child to a barren woman and land to a nomad. With this God behind us, we can walk with faith as he breaks into the future before us.