Part II of our Series on Visiting and Remembering

God visits us; through, with, and in the form of his servants. That’s what we learned at the conclusion of our last post.

That’s the truth conveyed in the book of Exodus:

¹Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ²And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

³And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” ⁴When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

⁷Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, ⁸and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

⁹And now, behold,the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:1–10)

In Jesus, God visits his beloved children physically, personally:

⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. ¹²But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:9-14)

In Christ, God looks at us through actual human eyes, touches us with actual human hands. It is the event to which all previous visitations point. Unfortunately, we humans usually miss his visitation. Note how Jesus describes this as he visits Jerusalem:

And when he drew near and saw [Jerusalem], he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41–44, ESV, emphasis mine)

This is reminiscent what we talked about earlier this month: Stay awake! Be ready! The Lord shows up in the way you least expect him to…and yet he’s told you exactly in what form he’s going to visit: the stranger, the naked, the imprisoned. There is no reason for us to not know the time of his visitation as long as we remember and treasure his word.

How do you balance helping the Lord when he shows up as the stranger, naked or imprisoned while not enabling others in their sin?