The Long March Home to the Valleys

In 1686, the Duke of Savoy expelled the Waldensians from their alpine valleys in northern Italy. These believers, who had quietly maintained their faith for centuries in the Piedmont mountains, were scattered overnight. Soldiers burned their churches, killed thousands, and marched the survivors into exile across the Alps. Families who had worshipped in the same stone chapels for generations found themselves wandering foreign roads, weeping for a homeland that God had seemingly abandoned.

For three years, the remnant survived in scattered communities across Switzerland and Germany, gathering in borrowed rooms to pray one refrain over and over: bring us back. Restore what was lost. Let Your face shine on us again.

Then in August 1689, a pastor named Henri Arnaud gathered roughly nine hundred Waldensians and led them on an extraordinary march back across the Alps. They climbed mountain passes in the dark, forded rivers, and fought their way through hostile territory for two weeks. When they finally descended into their own valleys and saw the ruins of their churches still standing among the chestnut groves, they fell to their knees and wept — not tears of sorrow this time, but of recognition. God had heard.

Psalm 80 is the prayer they prayed in exile: "Restore us, O God; let Your face shine, that we may be saved." It is the cry of every community that has tasted devastation and dared to believe that the Shepherd of Israel neither slumbers nor forgets. The prayer of restoration always begins in the dark — but it ends in the valleys of home.