On the Common 064
Good morning,
Another Dumb Hill to Die On:
The list of actors who are allowed to do Boston Accents:
Anyone with the last name Affleck
Anyone with the last name Wahlberg
Matt Damon
Chris Evans
John Krasinski
Amy Poehler
Everyone else, please stop it. Tom Hanks, I adore you, but no.
*suggestions for additions are welcome in the comments
The Part Where There’s an Essay: I Was in the Library
I attended a Christian liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania. Our campus always gathered together mid-morning Tuesdays and Thursdays for chapel. Students were required to attend but were allowed four “skips” per semester. I made it my habit to never miss chapel. I am a rule follower by nature. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
By the middle of the spring semester of my freshman year, the work had built up and I needed some extra time to catch up on assignments and to study. So when 10:00 rolled around, and most of the campus gathered in Brubaker Auditorium for chapel, I walked to the library. I spent a good amount of time immersed in my homework, gearing up for an exam that would happen later that day.
I wasn’t watching the clock, because I knew when chapel let out, activity in the library would pick up again and I’d be cued to go to class. But as the minutes went by, the library remained quiet. I made some more progress in my studying. I was surprised when I finally checked the clock — chapel was long past finished. I packed up my things.
After a quick stop at the circulation desk to check out one resource, I walked outside to the large stretch of lawn in front of the student center. Birds were singing, the sun was out...but nobody was around. The campus, usually buzzing with activity after chapel, was completely silent.
Having been raised as a good evangelical child of the 80s and 90s, I did have the brief, hilarious thought “what if the Rapture happened and you missed it?” Thankfully I’d been discipled out of such things by then, but still...what was going on? I made my way over to the classroom building where my next class was, now a full hour past the starting time. I put my head down and took a nap.
Eventually, someone joined me in the class; it wasn’t the professor, but another student. They were breathless and excited. “Wow, that was just amazing, wasn’t it?” she said breathlessly. I responded the best I could: with a blank stare. “I was in the library. Did something happen in chapel?”
And that’s the story of how I missed the kickoff to a small revival on the campus of Messiah College. During chapel, the speaker had preached mightily on the topic of sin and repentance. A young man had stood and publicly confessed some things. A line formed at a public microphone and people continued to confess publicly. There was weeping and prayer.
And I was in the library, using my first-ever chapel skip, wondering where everyone went.
Meetings continued throughout the week, every evening, for a few more days. Classes continued. Life went on. It was nothing like what is occurring on the campus of Asbury University right now.
My thoughts on revivals on campuses and in churches are generally “wait and see.” While I am grateful for the reminder that God moves in our world, I am generally cautious around emotional church proceedings. My own personal history with the charismatic movement makes me more cautious. If a revival is real, it will bear good fruit in the people it affects, both those in the chapel and those in the larger community. I hope that we can eagerly anticipate that fruit from the Asbury revival.
In his comments from earlier this week, the president of the school said, “We will know that revival has truly come to us when we are truly changed to live more like him at work, at study, at worship, and at witness.” Amen and amen.
In my experience in college, there were people who were markedly changed after that day in chapel. And then there were some who were not changed. I pray that God is pleased to sustain the growth that is happening in fits and spurts in all of us -- on college campuses, in churches, and elsewhere.
For the Anglophiles
Reads & Listens of the Week
Last week I was reminded of this amazing list from 1958 about 129 Ways to Snag a Husband. This whole thing makes me laugh until I cry. I actually met David because I set up my easel outside his engineering school.
I always love it when Laura does a book review for Story Warren, and this one was no exception: How Much is Enough? If you need good children’s book recommendations, follow her on Instagram.
I’m really loving The Elephant in the Room from Zach and Maggie.
Here’s a wonderful exploration of the film Groundhog Day, which I have already chided you into watching, I hope. She manages to work in my favorite quote from GK Chesterton: “It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
And lastly, in sports: an attempt at a replay of that Malcolm Butler catch:
So, old friends, you must forget what you’ve had to forgive. Let love be stronger than the feelings that rage and run beneath the bridge. - Rich Mullins, “Hello Old Friends”
Not true, but let me know if you know anyone for whom this has worked, please chime in.
People have told me that someday my ship will come in. - but I will likely be at the airport.
Thank you for your words about the revival at Asbury - echoed perfectly what I have been thinking as I have seen or share about it this week.