Today’s Devotional: Blessed by the Past, Blessing the Future
The devotional from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening below centers around the simple idea that God uses our labor to bless not only us, but those that come after us. Specifically, Spurgeon uses the example of a well. We dig it, God fills it and later on someone other than us stumbles across it and uses it.
In some ways I see this principle mirrored in old church buildings. The original congregation sacrificed time and resources to build the building, God sustained the congregation over the generations and then the future congregation uses the building to worship and serve in ways that wouldn’t have been possible without it:
The comfort obtained by a one may often prove serviceable to another; just as wells would be used by the company who came after. We read some book full of consolation, which is like Jonathans rod, dropping with honey. Ah! we think our brother has been here before us, and digged this well for us as well as for himself … Travellers have been delighted to see the footprint of man on a barren shore, and we love to see the waymarks of pilgrims while passing through the vale of tears.
The pilgrims dig the well, but, strange enough, it fills from the top instead of the bottom. We use the means, but the blessing does not spring from the means. We dig a well, but heaven fills it with rain. The horse is prepared against the day of battle, but safety is of the Lord. The means are connected with the end, but they do not of themselves produce it. See here the rain fills the pools, so that the wells become useful as reservoirs for the water; labour is not lost, but yet it does not supersede divine help.
Read the entire devotional at ccel.org.
How have you been blessed by the efforts of those who went before you? Is there anything you’ve been involved in that’s gone on to bless someone else?
