Light Before Shadow
A new heart also will I give you. Then shall ye remember your own evil ways.” — EZEK. xxxvi. 26, 31.
HAT a singularly subtle thought! Only
an inspired book could have conceived it. The prophet says that the memory of our badness only comes after we have become good. “A new heart will I give you; then shall ye remember your own evil ways.” One would have expected the opposite statement. We should have looked for such words as these: “You must expect for a little to be troubled with old memories. You must not be surprised, when you are in the first stage of reformation, to experience the remorse of conscience for bad deeds in the past. When your new nature is complete, when the weaning process is over, when you become accustomed to the corn of the land, you will forget all about your struggles and failures; you will remember your shortcomings no more.” The prophet says it is only then you will remember them. He says the valleys of your life will not become visible until you have scaled the height and stood upon the mountain’s brow. And truly he is right; experience cries “Amen!” The memory of sin is the latest gift of my Father. His earliest gifts are incentives to move forward; they rather discourage a retrospective view. God says to the beginner, “Forget the things which are behind; press toward the mark of the prize!” But when the mark of the prize is won, when the top of the hill is gained, then for the first time He says, “Look back!” Then, for the first time, memory wakes, and our yesterday appears; and the valley of the past looks lowly and the shadows of the past seem deep. We beat upon our breast and say, “O wretched man that I am!”
Lord, in my hour of remorseful memory, let me remember this! Let me remember that the pain of my bad deed is only felt by the new heart. Often I cry with the hymnist, “Where is the blessedness I knew when first IT saw the Lord?” Teach me that it is quite natural there should be more blessedness at first! Help me to enter into the comfort of the thought that the burden of yesterday is reserved for the pure soul! Reveal to my troubled spirit that my sense of distance from Thee grows with my nearness! I never seem to follow Thee so far off as when I am within the grounds of Thy house with many mansions. Let me measure my nearness by my pain! When the debts of yesterday oppress me, when the shadows of my past appal me, when the deeds of my dead days rise up for judgment in my soul, tell me that the vision means, not war, but peace! Tell me that the haze upon my morning is summer heat, not winter’s gloom! Tell me it is the resurrection body that makes me sensitive to pain! Tell me I feel to-day what I felt not yesterday because to-day I have received a new heart — received more power to feel! I can bear the burden of the past if to bear it means nearness to
Thee.