R S Thomas - Fire from heaven

Read a wonderful poem by the Welsh poet R S Thomas recently. It’s called ‘The Chapel. You know those old grey chapels by country roads in Wales or Cornwall, small – they probably only ever held about 50 people at most – (the picture is of one we saw on holiday in Wales this Easter) well it's about one of those.

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.