Later You Will Understand # 1

Later You Will Understand # 1

"You do not know now what I am doing - but later you will understand" (John 13:7).

Peter could not understand why Jesus should so condescend as to wash his feet. It perplexed and puzzled him, and he shrank from submitting to it. Jesus said, "You do not know now what I am doing - but later you will understand." And so it proved. There came days afterwards when he understood it all, when he knew why his Master had done it - and when he truly saw beauty, wisdom, love, richest instruction, and divine necessity in it.

And the same principle applies all through life. There are many things in the providence of God which at the time are dark and obscure - but which the future makes clear and plain. The Lord lays us aside in the midst of our usefulness, He desolates our homes, He breaks our harp strings, He pours bitterness into our cups of sweetness. Our lives are full of strange, perplexing things - and we do not know what they mean. Our dim eyes cannot read the dark pages. Our dull ears cannot hear the voice of love that speaks out to us from every circumstance. Our heavy hearts cannot perceive the love which throbs with full pulse in every event.

But there will come a day when every dark page in our life's history shall be explained - when all the tangle and confusion shall be unraveled, and the web shall lie before us woven through unto the end, warp and woof, with threads of gold and silver. This word of Christ is the key to all the dark and strange providences in the life of every believer; "You do not know now what I am doing - but later you will understand."

One reason for the present obscurity - is our ignorance, or present limited knowledge. We know now, only in part. We see now, only through a glass darkly.


The boy enters the college, and the teacher puts into his hand a paper of Greek, and asks him to read it. But he cannot understand a sentence of it. He cannot spell out a single word. He cannot tell what one letter is. It is a page of hieroglyphics to him. It is full of mysteries. But the years roll on. He applies himself to the study of the language. He masters the alphabet; he learns to spell out the words, and then to translate. By and by commencement day comes, and the professor hands him again the same page that so puzzled and perplexed him on the day of his entrance. It is all plain now. He reads it off with perfect ease - he understands every word. There is beauty for him now in every line. Every sentence contains some golden truth. It is a page of the New Testament in the very words first written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit - and words of love, of heavenly wisdom, of divine instruction lie upon the page. As he reads they thrill his whole soul, and fill all his heart with the warmth and tender joy of Heaven. Every word is bright with the hidden fires of God's love. Riper knowledge has unlocked to him, all the mysteries of the page!

We are all scholars in God's school. The lessons set for us seem at first like the pages of an unknown language. We cannot pronounce the words. We cannot understand their meaning. They confuse and perplex us. We see no wisdom, no beauty, no love in them. But the passing years bring riper wisdom and fuller knowledge. 

Every day, the past becomes plainer; and when we stand at the end of our school days the old confusing pages will be clear and simple to us. We shall be able to read them off with ease. Then we shall see that every line held a golden lesson for our hearts - that every dark providence in our lives was one of God's precious love-thoughts written out for us - and the whole page will glow with divine beauty.

Only fuller knowledge is needed to explain to us much of the mystery of our lives. In the cloudless light and perfect revelation of Heaven - every shadow of mystery will vanish, and the strangest providences will seem as plain and easy as childhood's first lessons are to ripened and cultured manhood.

Another reason why many of the Lord's ways seem so strange to us, is because we see them only in their incompleteness. We must wait until they are finished, before we can fully understand what God is doing.

In the artist's studio, you may see pictures that are only faint outlines. There are the branches of a tree and no trunk; or there is the trunk and no branches. There is a head, only, finished - or the outline picture of a man with only one arm or one hand filled out. No one would judge of the artist's work in this unfinished state. He would wait until all his pictures were completed.

~J. R. Miller~

(continued with # 2)