Tonight!

Tonight.

There is a tent just down the street from our church parking lot. I will park at my church tonight, and walk there.

Canvas and poles and chairs and lights, and a temporary stage…the kind of setup that looks, honestly, a little bit like a county fair decided to get filled with the Holy Ghost. And there is something about it that makes you want to stand very still and just look at it.

Because this is an old thing. A nearly forgotten thing. The camp meeting, the live music, the evangelist and the warm night and the people who came hurting and left transformed: this is that, already.

Pitched right in the middle of an ordinary Thursday, in a vacant lot tucked in between three participating churches, with drugs being dealt just across the railroad tracks, and with Knoxville doing what Knoxville does all around it.

Hapach. That is a Hebrew word meaning “Divine reversal”. The thing that was one way, and then God came, and now it is gloriously another way entirely.

Come tonight because something is already happening that you cannot see yet. Come because the God who creates “Hapach” like it’s no big thing, He showed up in a tent in the wilderness. He chose a tent, and He dwelled in a tent among His wandering people, has He never once outgrown His fondness for the tent meeting. He is not too fancy for canvas. He never was.

Come because worship under an open sky does something to a person. Come because there is a kind of faith that only gets activated when you fold yourself into an uncomfortable chair next to a stranger and decide, together, to expect the supernatural.

You are not hoping He shows up tonight.

He is already there, leaning toward you, waiting for you to arrive.

Come expecting. Tonight is already good.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​