Revival in my own life has been brought together by the near psychotic connection of two events--first, by a character in the late 60's who stepped onto a Broadway stage and, dressed in blue jeans and a tee shirt, cried, "I wanna get washed!" It was the beginning of Godspell, and it spoke to a double hunger. We all want to get washed, and we all want to be in the presence of God. According to the old cry, we want to "Get washed--the kingdom of God is at hand!"

The second event came when I bucked hay bales in northern Oklahoma. By nightfall these little alfalfa "groaties" would be fused to my skin with sweat--those itching, ugly, hayfield microbes, gargantuan chiggers that gnawed at you like fanged, fire ants, which bit through the dermis and stung like cornered scorpions. It was hard to lead us hayfield workers to Christ--we could hardly be threatened with hell. For we who suffered the hayfield groats lost all fear of purgatory. In the fiery itch of our days, we scratched and dreamed of only one thing: the evening shower.

We had rigged an old barrel under the windmill and set it high on a two-by-four framework. It stood up in the Oklahoma sun all day long, warming until it was ready for field hands to stand beneath its generous flow and be clean. Its walls were corrugated tin on three sides, but the fourth side was open wide to the setting sun. We stood in the water like Adam in Eden. We would face the west and rebuke the field demons, "In the name of Jesus Christ, get off of us, you dogs of hell!" Then we'd turn the tap and sing, "Just as I Am" as the water flowed, and we were born again! And if anyone of you asked me on any late June day what I most wanted in life, I would have said, "O God, I wanna get washed!"