The Two Sisters Who Prayed Until the Shepherd Returned

In 1949, the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides was spiritually desolate. Churches sat nearly empty. Young people wanted nothing to do with faith. The community that had once thrived under the gospel felt abandoned, like a vineyard left to the wild boar — stripped bare and exposed to every wind.

But in a small stone cottage in the village of Barvas, two elderly sisters refused to stop crying out. Peggy Smith was eighty-four and blind. Her sister Christine was bent double with arthritis. Neither could make it to church. Yet night after night, they knelt on the worn floor of their kitchen and pleaded with the Almighty to turn His face back toward their island. They wept. They quoted Isaiah 44:3 back to God like a holy argument: "I will pour water on the thirsty land."

They sent word to their pastor: God had shown Peggy in a vision that revival was coming. Within weeks of evangelist Duncan Campbell's arrival, something broke open. Entire villages came under deep conviction. Pubs emptied. Roads filled with people walking to prayer meetings at midnight. The Shepherd had turned His face toward Lewis again.

This is the cry of Psalm 80 made flesh — "Restore us, O God; make Your face shine upon us, that we may be saved." The psalmist knew what those two sisters knew: restoration begins not with programs or strategies, but with tear-soaked persistence before the One who never stops being Shepherd, even when His flock feels forsaken.