Revive Us Again

Surely his salvation is at hand 

for those who fear him,

that his glory may dwell in our land.

Will you not revive us again,

so that your people may rejoice in you?

Psalm 85:9

God, can we have civil conversation in our land again? Can you revive us to a state of dignity? This story gives me hope that God is at work reviving God’s people.

 

In 1856 at the age of seventeen, William MacKay left his Scottish home to attend college. His mother gave him a Bible on which she wrote his name and Scripture verses. At college he began well. But eventually he drifted far from the way he had been raised. He began drinking heavily. At a low point, he carelessly pawned the Bible using the money to buy whiskey

Years later, MacKay completed medical training and worked in a city hospital where he had a dying man as a patient. The patient knew he would soon die and began to urgently request that the hospital staff get a book in his apartment. He needed that book brought to him. “I need my book, I need my book!” was his dying request.

The doctor went to the apartment, curious to find out what “book” had been so precious that holding it again had been a dying man’s greatest desire. His search uncovered a Bible.  Inside the front cover, in his mother’s hand, was his own name.  It had been years since he had seen it, but there could be no mistake. Someone had reclaimed the Bible from that pawn shop, and it had become a priceless treasure to a dying man.

Returning to his hospital office, with the Bible worn and weathered, he could still see the texts his mother had marked for him to read. He read them all night in his medical office, and by the next morning, his life was changed for good from a state of immorality to a state of salvation.

He left the medical profession, went to a theological college, and became a minister serving the Prospect Street Presbyterian Church, in Hull, Scotland. His best-known hymn, still familiar today, is “Revive Us Again

Adapted from an article by David T. Myers