Reflection: God Has Visited His People (June 9, 2013)

The 3rd Sunday after Pentecost
1 Kings 17:17-24; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17

There once was a time when visits were a social art. Hosts would extend formal invitations to come for a visit. Friends, neighbors, and extended family members would make plans for a visit well in advance. However, as technologies advanced and society grew more casual, the nature of making a visit changed. Now personal visits have given way to postings on social media that are typically momentary and have little impact in people’s lives. Software keeps track of the digital activity and even counts it as visits, but such things are hardly the visits of days gone by — and nothing like the life changing visits that the widow of Zarephath and the people of Nain experienced. In these accounts, God acted in such a way that people knew that He had personally and powerfully visited them.

In Zarephath and in Nain, the visit of God came on the heels of great loss and sorrow. In both of these cases, widows had lost their only sons. Destitute, hopeless, and grieving, these widows were more alone and vulnerable than most of us can understand. Heartbroken and powerless, their difficult circumstances had been made them ready to receive a visit from God. And visit them He did. Doing more than anyone would have asked and more than they could have imagined, God visited them in their desperation and acted to restore peace, hope, and wonder in their lives. Unlike the social visits of our past and the cyber visits of our present, when God visited these people He worked dramatic changes to their circumstances to deliver them from their oppressors.

Like the Lord’s visits to Zarephath and Nain, our visits to one another were once meant to bring aid and encouragement to those in need. But the manner and purpose of the visits that we make has changed. Formal, meaningful, and often practical visits have given way to casual, frivolous, and trivial encounters. But the way and the reasons that God visits His people remains the same. Although He is pleased to receive one, God does not wait for an invitation to intervene in our lives. Instead, He comes to us in the midst of our difficult circumstances to bring the aid that we may not know to ask for or may not even imagine is available to us. When He does, we know that God has entered into our situations and we rejoice with those who have also exclaimed, “God has visited His people.”

Audio file of the sermon "God Has Visited His People."