"The Chapel" - R.S. Thomas

A little aside from the main road
becalmed in a last-century greyness
there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal
to the tourist to stop his car
and visit it. The traffic goes by
and the river goes by, and quick shadows
of clouds too, and the chapel settles
a little deeper into the grass

But here once on an evening like this,
in the darkness that was about
his hearers, a preacher caught fire,
and burned steadily before them
with a strange light so that they saw
the splendour of the barren mountains
about them and sang their amens
fiercely, narrow but saved
in a way that men are not now.

There is a sadness about it that this happened once, but it has now gone – the glory has departed and the chapel is empty but that doesn’t mean it was now once real. The image of the preacher who ‘caught fire’ here is just right. It doesn’t say who he was, or draw attention to his gifts, preparation, or anything – just that the Spirit once fell here, the fire of heaven touched earth the word of God gripped him and he just burned before them. That describes revival perfectly, when a person in a particular place is consumed by God in worship or preaching or praise. We just have to be in the right place with the right heart for when it happens.