James says that true religion consists in “visiting widows and orphans in their distress” (James 1:27). We don’t get the point if we think of “visit” in our first sense of “pay a call.”
In Christ, God has “visited and redeemed His people” (Luke 1:68), and the dayspring from on high visited us (1:78; cf. 7:16). Moses “visited” his brothers when he killed the Egyptian (Acts 7:23). To “visit” widows and orphans means to act, and to act zealously, in their defense.
No accident that the Greek word for “visit” is epispektomai , and has an etymological sense of “look around” or “examine with the eyes.” To visit is to “see” in the full biblical sense, that is, to judge.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Lift My Chin, Lord
Lift my chin, Lord,Say to me,“You are not whoYou feared to be,Not Hecate, quite,With howling sound,Torch held…
Letters
Two delightful essays in the March issue, by Nikolas Prassas (“Large Language Poetry,” March 2025) and Gary…
Spring Twilight After Penance
Let’s say you’ve just comeFrom confession. Late sunPours through the budding treesThat mark the brown creek washing Itself…
