Time and Place for Meeting Jesus
r I HERE was one spot on earth which Je-
“*■ sus seems to have especially loved. It was “his wont” to go there. As John was his favorite disciple, the family of Lazarus, his favorite household, Galilee, his favorite water, so Olivet was his favorite mountain. An oriental city, with its crowded and filthy streets, could have no charm for such a spirit as his. When duty called our Lord into Jerusalem, he went there; but as soon as he could escape from its dirt, its dogs, and its din he bent his footsteps over the Valley of Kedron to the quiet Mount of Olives.
It afforded him a blessed asylum from noisy traffickers, churlish scribes, and insolent Pharisees. Olivet always treated him kindly. Olivet cast no stones at him. Her ancient trees gave him cool shelter from the noonday heat and the heavy night dews. Her flowers talked to their Creator- Jesus, and her verdant turf spread a couch for his weary limbs. It is hard to identify more than three or four places now on which we are certain that Christ set his foot. One of these is the well’s mouth at Sychar. A second is the hill-top above Nazareth. The third is that still beaten road that leads over Olivet to the ruined village of Bethany.
It was on that roadside that Jesus was sitting when he beheld guilty Jerusalem and wept over it. It was about that same spot where he sat and delivered that wonderful prophetic discourse (in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew) on the Tuesday of his passion week. He slept that night at Bethany, on the eastern slope of the mountain. On the next day, as the conspirators were lying in wait for him, he did not enter Jerusalem at all. Probably he passed it in deep retirement upon Olivet, communing with his Heavenly Father and preparing silently for that tremendous tragedy which should soon cast its pall of midday darkness over the city’s streets and Calvary’s altar of sacrifice. He needed repose. That day he dwelt apart. And, as Dr. Farrar eloquently says: “On that Wednesday night he lay down for the last time on earth. On the Thursday morning he awoke, never to sleep again.” We must not think of Jesus as living with his disciples after the manner of men during the forty days between his crucifixion and his ascension. His public work was over. He only gave his disciples an occasional interview, and his last appearance among them was that memorable and sublime moment when he parted from them on the eastern brow of Olivet and a “cloud received him out of their sight.”
I have reviewed this connection of our Lord with that sacred spot, not only for its historic interest, but for its spiritual suggestions. If Jesus sought a place for quiet meditation and for retirement from the city’s bustle and Babel noises, every Christian should have his Olivet also. Those of us who live in large towns are apt to live at high pressure. The rural Christian has the scenery and the solitudes of God’s great, wide country about him. But in the bustling, bewildering, driving, roaring city, how difficult it is to ‘’dwell apart.” Where and how can we escape the roar and the contagion of excitements? Where shall we find a Hermon or a Horeb, a brook Cherith or a Mount of Olives?
From early morn until bedtime we city folk are exposed to the whirl. The world meets us at the breakfast-table in the columns of the morning journal. We snatch the record of fires and floods, telegrams and trials, with our cup of coffee. After a hurried meal, we launch out into the crowded day. Engagements press. Care collars the tradesman, the lawyer, and, in fact, every man, as soon as he gets into the street. When he reaches his
place of business, his table is probably piled with letters demanding prompt reply. Customers pour in or patrons wait; or, even if one earns his bread on a fourth floor, the “elevator” brings the street up to his door. The day’s furnace of excitement is kindled in the morning and glows at a white heat until the crowded omnibus or rail-car carries the weary man out of it toward the sunset. I know of Christian merchants with whom I can never catch a five minutes’ important conversation without keeping one or more others waiting impatiently behind me. After such bustling days, come the late dinner, the evening paper, the evening visitors, the public entertainments, and, in some happy cases, the evening prayer-meeting in God’s house. Amid all this maelstrom of excitement, how little chance for quiet introspection, calm meditation, or devout fellowship with Jesus! Even the Sabbath is too often a day of overtaxing strain upon body and mind. Every good thing has its attendant evils; and the evil attendant upon the Sabbath arrangements of many active Christians is that they are deprived of nearly all opportunity for repose of mind, or for study of their own hearts or of God’s precious Word. With many good people there is more preaching than praying or thinking, more head work than heartwork, more swallowing of truth than digestion. They hear tenfold more than they heed or remember. And still the cormorant cry is for more sermons, sermons, sermons. To such people — and their name is legion — the excitements of the week simply give place to the religious excitements of God’s day, and through them all the immortal soul finds too little converse either with itself or with God. If Jesus needed an Olivet for quiet communion and prayer, surely, his earthly followers need one still more.
Can none be found? Can city Christians discover no times or places for meditation, prayer, Bible study, or heart-converse with their Lord? Yes; they may, if they so determine. I know of a busy but most pious merchant who rises early, and so hems the day with a good hour over his Bible and on his knees that it does not ravel out into frivolity or undue conformity to the world. I have known of others who had a place for secret prayer at noonday in the loft of their warehouses. Some catch a half-hour of refreshment in the noon prayer-meeting. Others rigidly keep quiet evening hours for bathing their souls. No Christian can afford to live constantly in the whirl. Daniel needed to have an Olivet in his chamber, amid Babylon’s roar and impiety. Peter found his on a housetop in Joppa. Let every child of Jesus resolve that he will have a place and a time for meeting his dear Master alone, and he will go forth from such holy interviews with his face shining and his strength renewed. Our Olivets will prepare us for that mount of heavenly glory where we shall see Jesus as he is.