The Long Walk Home to the Valleys

In February 1687, Duke Victor Amadeus II of Piedmont ordered every Waldensian in his territory to convert to Catholicism or leave. Soldiers swept through the alpine valleys these believers had called home for five centuries. Families were torn apart. Thousands perished in prison camps. The survivors scattered across Switzerland — a people fed, as the psalmist wrote, on the bread of tears, made a source of contention to their neighbors.

For two years, the exiled Waldensians gathered in small congregations around Lake Geneva, praying one relentless prayer: Restore us. Let Your face shine on us again.

On August 16, 1689, pastor Henri Arnaud stood before nine hundred men on the shores of the lake and led them in prayer. That night they began what history remembers as the Glorious Return — a two-week march through hostile territory, over alpine passes above eight thousand feet, back to the valleys they believed the Almighty had given them.

They arrived battered, outnumbered, and half-starved. But they arrived. And in those ancient valleys, they rebuilt their churches stone by stone.

Psalm 80 is the prayer of every community that has known exile and still dares to believe the Shepherd of Israel hears. "Restore us, O God Almighty; make Your face shine on us, that we may be saved." It is the cry that refuses to let go — the prayer that keeps walking through the dark, trusting that the God who once turned His face toward His people will turn it again.