revival

I’m headed to Des Moines, Iowa this morning.

Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor, is preaching! Not just any preaching, it’s revival-style preaching.

My traveling friend and I signed up for the revival as soon as the dates were announced.

January 30 was the first stop on Bolz-Weber’s “Red State Revival” tour. She said “she felt led to do after the 2024 presidential election, to remind people of the importance of humility, curiosity, forgiveness, mercy and hope when they are faced with divisiveness, suffering and rising Christian nationalism.” Besides Oklahoma, other states on the revival tour include Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa and Georgia. Over a dozen additional dates have recently been added.

“In a roughly 90-minute message punctuated by her razor-sharp wit and bouts of congregational singing of familiar hymns, Bolz-Weber, gently reminded those gathered that their best way forward amid heightened political division and ugly rhetoric, was to lean on their shared Christian values and faith in Christ.”

“Bolz-Webber said little about political party affiliations, but kept her message focused on the transient nature of power and religious institutions. She used Scripture that chronicles the story of Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple as an analogy for contemporary anxieties about Christian nationalism and societal changes.”

She said true hope is not in nationalism or ideology but in the enduring gospel of Jesus Christ.”The only way I know to combat Christian nationalism is by believing in the thing that will outlast it, and that is the Gospel.”

Before they adjourned, she reminded members of the crowd that they are part of God’s story.

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything sexier than Jesus and prayer and the Bible to offer you, but those are the only load bearing structures we have,” Bolz-Weber said. She said Scripture is helpful in times of anxiety “because being a people with a sacred text is about knowing that we are a very small part of a very big story.”

“And, having that big and that old of a story gives us an important perspective, because when all we can see and feel and think about is the personal and political crap that’s happening right now, it’s good to remember that we are people of an old, old story, one that starts actually at the beginning of time and brushes the skin of the present and reaches into a promised future … and, the promise that God is not done and we will not be left alone still holds in the promise that hope is not naïve.”

Excerpts above from The Oklahoman.

I arrived in Des Moines several hours ahead of my friend. I hung out at Starbucks while writing this blog. I believe the image presented in my Cortado says it all.

Traveling mercies.