To the account which St. Matthew gives of our Lord's entry into Jerusalem, St. Luke adds the passage of which these words are part. Let us take them home to ourselves in the trial which is ever going on of our own lives. The day of visitation, we may be sure, comes in one shape or another to us all. Not to know the time of our visitation means not to recognise the significance and the bearing of those trials for which we live, which search our hearts and test their soundness. It is not to know when God gives us some fresh opportunity of good, not to be alive to the openings and the secret leadings which come to us all in due season for a decisive step in the higher choice of a higher life; not to recognise when the time comes, as it comes to all, which is meant especially to suit our necessities, to offer us a door of escape, to encourage and assist us in doing some good thing for God.
I. There is one kind of visitation which many of us are going through now, as real as if we had to make up our minds, or take our side in some difficult question of right or wrong, in some critical decision as to whether we will walk in the ways of evil or of good. How many of us are leading a quiet and peaceful life, an uninterrupted life, without anything greatly to disturb or trouble us no great sorrow, no great pain, no great fear, no great disadvantage to struggle with, no great care to weigh us down? There are the common temptations and burdens which belong to the lot of all men; but these surely are little to speak of when we think what other men have had have now to go through; what might have come upon us, and has not. And in this kind of life we go on undisturbed, it may be, from year to year. But there are two things to be remembered. One is, that without superstitiously vexing ourselves with the misgiving that God does bring evil upon us in proportion to good, it yet is obviously true that all this quiet cannot go on as it is for ever, that we must expect some time or other, some of the severer trials of life; that it is not likely that we should always escape pain, or vexation, or sickness so entirely, at least, as we are doing now. We are still men, and under the covenant of sickness and death. This is one thing; and the other, and even more important, is this this time of quiet is a time of visitation. In this time of peace and regular work, and quiet days and nights of sweet sleep, He is trying us, He is training us, and He is giving us time to fit ourselves, insensibly it may be, to meet the harsher ways of His Providence. Surely it is but too easy in the midst of peace and mercy to forget the great seriousness of life, where we are going, whom we have to deal with, what He has given us to do, whom we shall meet when we are dead, how we shall give an account of what we have had and enjoyed. And if we let all this slip out of mind we are missing our day, we are hearing the call of God without heeding, we are failing under our appointed trial, the trial of God's loving tenderness, just as if the trial were one of severity and sorrow, and suffering, and we were murmuring. The time of our visitation is upon us and we are not knowing it.
II. One word more. Without frightening ourselves with fears and fancies, which in the shape in which we dwell upon them, will probably never be realised, it is likely that we shall all of us have to be troubled in one way or another. If it is now with us a time of peace and quiet, now is the time to fit ourselves to meet trouble if it should come not by foolishly vexing ourselves about it, but by arming ourselves with that faith and trust in God, those steady regular habits of relying upon Him, and committing ourselves to His hand, which will alone help us, alone keep us up when the weather changes and the storm begins to rise. Now you have no pain to take off your thoughts, to weaken your bodies, to cloud your faculties, now you have no bitterness of sorrow to fill your heart; you have time to think, to learn, to consider, to give calm attention to what most concerns your peace. If this be your lot, if this is the manner of your visitation, see that you recognise it, and see that you do not waste it and trifle it away.
R. W. Church, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxviii., p. 353.
References: Luke 19:44. H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 113; J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity,part i., p. 333.