“All the Good the Past Hath Had Remains to Make Our Own Time Glad”

In one of the hymns in our hymnal, there is a line that goes, “All the good the past hath had, Remains to make our own time glad.” This line has helped me immensely on numerous occasions, because there have been times I've been caught up thinking about things that happened in the past, and the next thing you know, I'm complaining about them, and then suddenly I'm not feeling well. But this passage from this hymn has led me to get straight, or redirect myself in the right direction.

I can remember one time when I called a practitioner in this church to talk about this. Immediately this gentleman said to me, “Get the blessing from the experience.” That set me on the right track. Therefore, when I think about some of the things from the past — maybe thinking of them as unfortunate, or should never have happened — I realize now that each one was an opportunity for me to rise up, above and away from anything unfortunate and get the blessing from that experience. It was an opportunity to prove that whatever it was, it couldn't affect me adversely; it couldn't take my joy. Therefore, what seemed as an unfortunate experience was really an opportunity to prove otherwise, to prove my dominion over whatever it was that was trying to pull me down. All the past can ever do is to bless us.

So I am grateful for this instruction, and I try to remember it frequently. God is the one who knows what is good, and He gives everything that we need. He is so good. “All the good the past hath had, Remains to make our own time glad.” Your joy, no man can take away from you. I'm so grateful to have been learning these things in this church.