Carriers

The lady seeking to enter MacDonald’s just in front of me—I was not close enough to act the gentleman-- took the time to pull her jacket sleeve down over her hand before grasping the handle to open the door. By that time I had stepped just behind her, and she, seeing me, commented on her action: “I don’t want to catch that Corona virus. You never know who may have it.” I laughed and confessed my own germaphobia, “I’m the same way.” What the lady had feared was a carrier of the disease having touched the handle before she had. The disease originated on the other side of the earth. It came to America because someone carried it here. This morning I read where a cruise ship off the California coast was being denied docking. Why? The fear of a carrier. Weeks ago, our President closed our borders to any coming from nations of the origin of the pandemic. Why? Fear of a carrier. Carriers are feared. Not for who they are but for what they spread. The lady made me think all of this about carriers because I had just recently heard “carrier” used in a whole new way, a positive way. I had been listening to revival historian Matthew Backholer recount about the spread of the 1857 revival in New York across the U.S. and then to Ireland. Doing so, Backholer said, “Some folks were carriers of revival.” Revivals—seasons of God making His presence known to reinvigorate the Church and reach a community—do spread; and, it’s carriers that spread it. Some carriers have experienced revival at their home location and then travel to another place sharing their experience. Others hear of revival at another place, go there, and carry their experience back home. In the 1906 Azusa revival, folks made the pilgrimage there from all over the U.S. and the world, experienced that revival, and carried it back home. At Ausbury College in 1970 in February, revival struck during a Tuesday morning chapel. The service continued unceasingly for days. As the service continued, students and others, as they were led of God, left the school and traveled many miles by ground and air to share at other colleges and churches. They carried the revival. A virus in the body can be carried. Evidently, so can a revival in the soul. Both seem infectious to those susceptible to them. We need carriers of the move, presence, and experience of God. Not carriers to traverse the continent to another town or carriers that would cross the ocean to come to us. We need carriers that come from the back bedroom where they have sought God and bring their renewed spirit to Church. We need carriers who will come from the Church’s prayer room and bring the moving of the Spirit they feel in their hearts into the sanctuary for the worship service. And we need carriers who will carry the Gospel and experience of God from the sanctuaries of our churches to the lost of workplace, school, home, places of business, etc., of our communities. If the fear of a potential spread of the Corona virus via its carriers can cause such upheaval, change of behavior, concern, if it can have such affect on everything from the stock market, to schools, to the venues of healthcare, to the halls of government, what a powerful affect an actual visitation of God on His people would have on this nation as its carriers spread it through the networks of their lives. Such are carriers to welcome and not fear.

Carriers

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