The Revealing Past

“Hitherto hath the Lord helped us” — 1 Sam. vii. 12.

My Father, I am ever seeking from Thee a new revelation, and I am ever saying that Thou art silent. Yet it is only my own heart that is silent. I am seeking Thy revelation in the wrong direction; I am asking it from my future, and lo, it is coming from my past. The vision of my past is not a vision of old things; they are all renewed in the light of retrospect. The newest of all revelations is the life of my past when seen in Thee; it is like the difference between passing through a landscape at night and looking down upon the same landscape from the brow of the hill at morning. My past is so transfigured in retrospect that I would not have known it. Spots that looked barren when I was passing through, appear in looking back as scenes of luxuriant verdure. Events that seemed adverse in the watches of the night are transformed by the morning beam into messages of blessing. Crosses that pressed upon my soul in wandering through the wilderness are seen from the promised land to have been exceeding weights of glory, and it is almost with a cry of surprise that I exclaim, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped me.” The marvel of Thy revelation is its glorification of my rejected circumstances; the stones which the builder refused have been made the head of the corner. I have got more from Thee than faith promised. Faith only promised that Thou wouldst help me in spite of these circumstances, but lo, Thou hast made these circumstances themselves my helpers. Faith only promised that Thou wouldst deliver my soul from its struggles, but lo, Thou hast revealed to me that my struggles were themselves the agents of Thy deliverance. Faith only promised that notwithstanding the wilderness I would be brought safely to the land of rest, but lo, Thou hast shown me that the wilderness was itself the very portal to that land. Therefore, my past is to me a new revelation of Thyself. Thou hast not suffered me to see the hereafter, but Thou hast allowed me to behold the hitherto, and verily the hitherto is glorious. No vision of the future glory could to me be more wondrous, more divine, than is this sight of the glory of my past. I see it from the Mount of Transfiguration, and it is all new; its face is shining, its garments are glistening. I will raise a monument to the glory of my past; I will build it with the rejected stones that I left despised by the wayside, and I will write upon it the record of Thy guiding love, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”