The Retrieving of Yesterday
Isaiah ix. 3 v. “They joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest.”
The kind of joy which I would like to have in the presence of God is the joy of harvest. What is the joy of harvest? It is a resurrection joy. It is not the gladness which comes from getting anything new; it is the satisfaction of seeing the rising of buried things — the bursting from the ground of what I believed to be dead.
There is no joy to me like that. It is far more than being lifted out of my trouble; it is the lifting of my trouble itself. It is good to be taken from the fearful pit, and from the miry clay; but it is not the highest thing. The highest thing is to find that the miry clay itself contained gems of gold. It is much to be delivered from my past; but it is more to have my past vindicated, justified — to be able to say, “It was good for me to have been afflicted.” I do not think that Job’s was a perfect compensation. He was cured of his ailments, and he received new houses and lands. It was a joy, but it was not a harvest joy. It did not explain the years of famine. It did not make up for the time of waste. It did not say why the night had been. You may tell me that the night is far spent, and the day is at hand; it is well, but it is not sufficient. I want to know that there are songs in the night itself. I want to feel that I have not been wasting time. I want to believe that even my desert moments have been a march to the promised land. I would have the joy of reaping the buried grain — the joy of harvest.
Oh! Thou, who art come to seek and to save lost things, buried tilings, T lift mine eyes to Thee. Many have offered me a golden morrow; Thou alone hast offered to retrieve my yesterday. Many would give me a new garden; Thou alone rememberesi the treasure hid in the old ground. Give me back my past, oh, Lord. Restore to me the waste places of my heart. Reveal to me the meaning of my failures. Teach me the track of the path I deemed trackless. Show me the angel sitting on the tomb of my buried self. Show me that the man with whom I wrestled at Peniel was a man from heaven. Show me the vision of beauty that hovered over my pillow of stone. Show me that there was manna in my desert, which even Canaan did not hold. Then shall mine be a harvest joy, a resurrection joy, the joy of gathering the buried past. Then shall my heart be satisfied that the travail ol the soul was autumn’s gain. Then shall my mountain view indeed be beautiful, for it shall be seen from the place of my former valley. The joy of harvest is the joy of redeeming love.