Seeing God's Hand in Hindsight
"Surely the Lord was in this place, and I knew it not." Gen 28:16
There is a sense in which the days of our lives only become real after they’ve passed. We never quite know the meaning of an event until it's gone. Even then, we wonder if we see it right.
Jacob had been passing through a season of great self-inflicted suffering. He was a fugitive from his house, an exile from his country. He was homeless, friendless, wandering, and weary. Void of his hoped-for fortunes, he now only has a stone pillow for his head. He must have wondered if the wings of Divine favor had passed him by. Have his sins left him in the wilderness alone? Perhaps his soul cried, “My way is hidden from the Lord” (Isa. 40:27), and he slept, not only out of weariness, but out of sorts.
After a great vision, he awakens! And what did he find? He found that he had been mistaken all along. He discovered that he had never been so near to God as when he thought God was furthest away. Jacob felt most alone, yet the hands of heavenly glory were busy all around him. And the Angel of the LORD stood above it all. He saw that, unconsciously, he had been standing on holy ground all along. (Gen 12 & 13)
Before Jacob left Beth-el, he lamentingly cried… “Surely the Lord was in this place, and I knew it not.” Dear soul, is this your experience? In your sorrow, how often have you said, “Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself”? (Isa. 45:15) How often have you slept in the heaviness of your heart and desired not to wake? You didn’t know it then, but all around you were ministering spirits, and the LORD of Hosts stood over it all. (Gen. 28:13) And so, you awaken. The darkness has passed. God had been with you through the night season of your trial. Where your tears became the fractals through which you saw your Savior.
Dear one, it is not only to the glory of the future that you must look; you must look to see the glory of the past. You must learn to see that your yesterdays were all very good, though you did not see it then. You must confess over all your yesteryears, “Surely the Lord was in that place, and I knew it not.”