The Spring at Herrnhut

In August 1727, a small community of religious refugees gathered in the German village of Herrnhut on Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf's estate. They were fractured, quarrelsome, barely surviving — spiritually a kind of Dead Sea. Then during a communion service on August 13, something broke open. The Holy Spirit fell, and what began as a trickle of renewed devotion became an unceasing river.

Twenty-four members committed to round-the-clock prayer in hourly shifts. That prayer vigil — a thin stream at first — continued without interruption for over one hundred years. And from that single spring flowed something no one could have predicted: within two decades, the Moravians had sent more missionaries across the globe than the entire Protestant church had sent in two centuries. They carried the gospel to the Caribbean, to Greenland, to South Africa, to the indigenous peoples of North America.

What started as ankle-deep conviction at a communion rail grew waist-deep, then chest-deep, until it became a current no one could ford.

This is the vision Ezekiel saw — water trickling from beneath the threshold of the temple, deepening with every measure, turning salt water fresh and barren shores green. The river of God does not begin with a flood. It begins with a trickle from His presence. But wherever it flows, death gives way to life, and what was barren begins to bear fruit that never fails.