The Stream from Herrnhut

In 1722, a handful of persecuted Moravian refugees stumbled onto the estate of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf in Saxony. They were exhausted, homeless, and few in number. Zinzendorf offered them a patch of land, and they built a tiny village called Herrnhut — "the Lord's Watch."

For five years, the settlement sputtered with internal quarrels and theological disputes. It seemed like nothing more than a trickle seeping from beneath a threshold. Then, on August 13, 1727, during a communion service at Berthelsdorf, the Holy Spirit fell upon the congregation with such power that they could scarcely tell whether they had been on earth or in heaven. From that single gathering, a prayer vigil began that continued unbroken — twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week — for over one hundred years.

What started as a trickle became a river. Within two decades, the Moravians had sent more missionaries to the world than all of Protestantism had sent in two centuries. They carried the Gospel to the Caribbean, to Greenland, to South Africa, to places the church had written off as spiritually dead. Wherever that stream reached, life sprang up — churches, schools, communities of faith bearing fruit on both banks.

Ezekiel saw water flowing from God's temple, ankle-deep, then knee-deep, then a river no one could cross. The Almighty does not need a flood to begin. He needs only a trickle — and willing ground.