Francis Scott Key coined our motto In God We Trust in the fourth, mostly unsung and unknown, verse of the Star Spangled Banner. However, it took a terrible Civil War with 620,000 casualties for us to officially adopt the motto in April 1864 and stamp it on our money. Here we are at another juncture in American history where we are fiercely fighting amongst ourselves. Do we still believe what we boldly print across our currency or have we forgotten it like the fourth verse of our national anthem? 2,700 years ago, King Hezekiah faced the imminent destruction of his own nation. What can we learn from him when he trusted in God and when he did not? Patrick+
A coach you could trust
Two scrambled eggs sans salt and pepper, two pieces of dry wheat toast, one cup of beef bouillon, a small dish of red Jell-O (red only), and a glass of iced tea. That was our pre-game menu when I played college football at Trinity University – no exceptions. If you wanted to play for Coach Warren Woodson on Saturday afternoon, that is what you ate – period. The spartan cuisine did not endear Coach Woodson to his players. But winning sure did. And if you wanted to win, you did what she said. You trusted him – period.
On October 2, 1972, my eighteenth birthday, Sports Illustrated printed this dramatic header introducing one of the articles in that edition. As an ardent Alabama Football fan, I could scarcely believe the header was true:
WHEN IT COMES TO WINNING, HE'S THE MOST
THOSE WHO THINK BEAR BRYANT HAS MORE VICTORIES THAN ANY OTHER ACTIVE COACH CAN THINK AGAIN. THE TOP MAN IS WARREN WOODSON OF TRINITY UNIVERSITY IN TEXAS, WHO WON HIS FIRST GAME IN 1927 AND HIS 241ST LAST WEEK
A month later Coach Woodson recruited me to play for Trinity. “I believe you will start as a freshman,” he stated in his letter. Later, I had a strange suspicion he wrote that ato ll the recruits. No matter, I was hooked. Besides, to a boy who attended a small monastic school secluded atop a Tennessee mountain, San Antonio, Texas seemed as exotic as Fiji.
On my first day of football camp in mid-August 1973, I thought San Antonio was the hottest place on the planet and Warren Woodson was the oldest college football coach in America. I was way off with my first assumption. Death Valley is 1,300 miles west of the Alamo City and at least 15° hotter in August. But I was dead to rights on the second. At sixty-nine years old, I considered Coach Woodson ancient. The fact that I am that same age myself now is a little sobering.
Woodson’s eccentricities bewildered the veteran players as much as our large cadre of freshmen. He was obsessed with what his athletes’ diet. He never retreated from his sparse, bland pre-game fare he arranged for us. At the same time, he prescribed that we should chew each bite one hundred times, insisting it would enhance our digestion and render us more energy. One Saturday morning, I carefully calculated the length of time it would take us to chew each spoonful of scrambled eggs and red Jell-O a hundred times. Suffice it to say, the Trinity Tigers would arrive at the stadium at halftime. It is a little ironic that Coach Woodson, a practitioner of his own strenuous gastronomy edicts, died of colon cancer…albeit at 94.
One would hardly characterize Coach Woodson as sensitive and understanding, yet more proof of his unconventional behavior. The last time he used my name was in the recruitment letter he sent me. After that I was known only as “number 86;” not to mention the way he said it sounded something like “Pontius Pilate.” On that score, the worst time of the week – the very worst time – was Monday nights. The entire team gathered in a small theater room in the gymnasium to review the previous Saturday’s game film. “Excruciating” does not come close to describing the painful tedium of those interminably l-o-n-g sessions. Every mistake a player committed was replayed twenty times. Coach Woodson would carefully rewind the film, project the missed tackle, block, pass, etc., and repeat the process twenty times. I missed a tackle at right end against the University of Arkansas – Pine Bluff. After Coach Woodson replayed it for the entire team for the twentieth time, he looked over at me with his owl-like eyes and mused, “Number 86…you look like you’re on LSD.”
More evidence of his peculiar behavior occurred at the end of each home game. If you played in the game, you reported to Coach Woodson after you showered and dressed to receive an allowance for dinner. If you did not play, even though you stood on the sideline for three hours, you did not dare report to the old man. He made no secret of the fact that your compensation was based on how you performed. In the first game I started during my freshman year, I got in line behind other players who were handed ten or twenty dollars apiece. I strode up to the desk expecting the same, but coach did not even look up when he threw two one-dollar bills onto the linoleum at my feet. I said nothing but scooped up the two bucks and headed to Burger Boy on St. Mary’s Avenue.
I didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t hurt by Coach Woodson’s idiosyncrasies because to play for him was perhaps the greatest honor of my many years in athletics. He was a genius strategist, setting the standard for the great coaches who would follow him. Using no headphones to speak with the coaches in the press box, but standing on the sidelines abreast of his players, he could see the entire field and knew what every one of the twenty-two players had done in the split seconds before the whistle. He would send in one play after another on offense, breaking open the other team’s defense. For him, defense was an aggravating pause between possessions. Anticipating the Spread offenses that would proliferate after his long gridiron tenure, Coach Woodson knew, given enough time with the ball, he could outscore his opponents. And we did, Saturday after Saturday. I knew I was in the company of a genius – even if he had forgotten my name. I also knew if our team wanted to succeed, we’d better trust him.
Coach Woodson, who won 203 college football games, fifty-two additional junior college games, eighteen high school games, 116 college basketball games, also coached college baseball and track for several years. His running backs won the NCAA rushing title nine times. In fact, the year I played for him, our tailback, Earl Costley, surpassed Mercury Morris’s record for the most yards gained by a Texas collegian. That glory was short-lived, however, when Earl Campbell entered the University of Texas one year later.
Woodson took a break from coaching from 1941-1945 to serve as a Naval Lieutenant Commander in the Pacific theater of WWII. In 1989, Coach Woodson was admitted in the Football College Hall of Fame in Atlanta, Georgia. His portrait hangs alongside the likes of Knute Rockne, Darrell Royal, Ara Parseghian, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and Bear Bryant…just where it belongs. I never played for a more enigmatic coach, and I played three sports all through high school and eventually played three in college during my meandering, inglorious career. My football days came to an end after being injured in a pre-game scrimmage against Southwest Texas State during my sophomore season. As for Coach Woodson, he retired from coaching after my freshman year. While it was sometimes hard to play for him, I’ve always felt honored that I experienced the last burst of his unique genius. I trust there will never be another quite like him.
Face it! Isaiah 34 and 35
Coming to this mid-point in the lengthy book of Isaiah, the prophet’s foundational message is underscored: If Israel wants to flourish it must trust the LORD and He will protect and guide them. In fact, if any nation on earth wishes to prevail, they must trust the LORD. This point is pivotal in Isaiah. In the oldest copy of the text, the Great Isaiah Scroll found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, the scribe skips three spaces between Chapters 33 and 34. The three spaces not only mark the mid-point in the text but introduces an artful exclamation of why Israel must trust the LORD.
INSIGHT
The Dead Sea Scolls
We have the treasured Great Isaiah Scroll because in 1947 the Ta'amireh Bedouin tribe, a large tribe who settled in the Negev Desert, found three ancient scrolls stuffed in large clay vessels in a cave in Qumran on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. The leader of the Ta'amireh, brought the three scrolls to an antique dealer in Bethlehem. The largest scroll was one of the twelve texts of Isaiah that would be subsequently discovered in Qumran over the next decade. The Isaiah text was 1,000 years older than any other previously unearthed.
The other two scrolls found by the Ta'amireh were a commentary on the book of Habakkuk and a book about the regimen of the Jewish monastic community that preserved the scrolls. That ancient community, which thrived from about 150 BC to 68 AD was Essene, a strict ascetical Jewish community, established in opposition to Israel’s religious accommodations to their procession of Greco-Roman overlords. Because they feared syncretism, the merging of their Jewish religious tradition with Hellenistic ones, the Qumran community adopted an apocalyptic outlook. They believed God was unveiling the truth about the world to them while it remains hidden to others. For their community, God was unmasking the present degraded world for what it is, while disclosing to them a glorious, eternal future that would replace the fallen order. The fact that twenty-one copies of Isaiah were found in the Qumran caves should alert us to the book’s importance for this Essene community that trusted God would shepherd them through the perilous time in which they lived to a promising future. We should not be surprised that both John the Baptist and Jesus may have been influenced by the Essenes, nor should we be surprised that Roman legions destroyed the Qumran community in 68 AD, just two years before they obliterated the temple in Jerusalem. Tyrannical rulers – then and now – do not countenance those whose deepest trust is set on something or some One other than what their governments and their armies can offer.
This exaggerated pause in Isaiah magnifies the dual apocalyptic visions that follows. Chapters 34 and 35 are constructed as a diptych. In art, a diptych is composed of two panels facing one another. The panels consist of paintings or carved works that complement one another or contrast the message of the panel it faces. Isaiah 34 and 35 comprise the latter, a poetic diptych set in stark opposition to the other. These two chapters do not maintain a discernable chronology or story narrative. Isaiah inserts them at this midpoint of his long book as a wake-up call to his readers. Israel and other nations of the world are under judgment. People can either trust and obey the LORD and flourish or they can ignore the LORD’s guidance and be ruined. Chapter 34 paints a dire poetic portrait of judgment against those who have disobeyed. Facing it, Chapter 35 paints a bright portrait of deliverance. The correspondence between the two is unmistakable. Professor Bo Lim of Seattle Pacific University notes nine direct parallels within Isaiah’s diptych: [1]
Wrath/judgment (34:2–8) — Joy/deliverance (35:1–4)
Fall of nature (34:4, 9–15) — Blossoming of nature (35:1, 7)
Sword upon Edom (34:5–6) — Way to Zion (35:8–10)
Fall of the strong (34:7) —Restoration of the weak (35:3–6)
Water disappears (34:9) — Water appears (34:6–7)
Thorns, nettles, thistles, jackals (34:13) — Reeds, papyrus, no jackals (35:7)
Land unclean and dangerous (34:10–15) — Journey without danger (35:8–9)
No travel through Edom (34:10) — Open travel to Zion (35:8)
Enduring destruction (34:10, 17) — Enduring joy (35:10)
Note that Edom in Chapter 34 is symbolic of all the nations who oppose Israel and, therefore, oppose the purposes of God. Recall again God’s call and promise to Abraham. ‘I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ (Genesis 12:2-3). This does not mean that the entire world must become outposts of Israel but means that the LORD, who created the world and appointed every nation, has revealed His perfect will to Israel. Thus, Israel is to be a ‘light to the nations,’ if only the nations will pay attention (Isaiah 42:9).
The glorious destiny portrayed in Chapter 35, is captured in the prayer Jesus gave to his disciples – ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matthew 6:10). This prayer that dances off our lips so handily, is not only a prayer that we will live today in accord with God’s revealed will, but it is also a plea for God to bring about His promised eternal creation. Isaiah’s diptych begs the question of every reader: “In which reality do you choose to live?”
Modern diptych by photographer Chris J. Davis comparing the double icon of Christ and the Madonna and child with two bottles of medicine.
In God we trust…or not Isaiah 36:1-22
With Chapters 36-39, Isaiah leads the reader from this non-chronological diptych and plants her back into stark historical reality. The diptych comprised in Chapter 34-35 acts as a doorway to the second part of Isaiah where the prophet’s preoccupation is “trust,” more specifically who will Israel trust. To magnify the question, the reader is dropped into King Hezekiah’s court in Israel’s southern kingdom of Judah, where we see the young king grappling with his next moves with the fierce Assyrian Empire and conducting his initial negotiations with the even fiercer Babylonian Empire. Hezekiah is in an unenviable position.
The reader joins Hezekiah at least a decade after the northern kingdom, Ephraim, has fallen to the onslaught of the Assyrian war machine. Every small nation and fortified city south of the Mediterranean Sea to Jerusalem has capitulated, including forty-six towns and cities surrounding Jerusalem. The southern kingdom, Judah, is all that is left of Israel in the Promised Land, and they are facing annihilation. As Chapter 36 opens, the Judean city of Lachish, a mere twenty-five miles southwest of Jerusalem, Judah’s capital, is being besieged. Capitalizing on the mounting fear of the Jerusalemites, Assyria’s King, Sennacherib sends his envoy and a large military contingency to the outskirts of the city. His primary envoy, “the Rabshekeh,” literally cupbearer, was probably his field commander, and would lead Assyria’s negotiating team. Hezekiah sends a trio of his trusted advisers. They meet with the Assyrians under a flag of truce at the Pool of Siloam, situated about one-third mile from the temple. The Rabshakeh’s objective is to cow the Judeans to surrender. To that end, he is pleased that a large curious crowd from Jerusalem has encircled the negotiators.
The Rabshekah wants to crush the remaining confidence and trust of the Jerusalemites. He begins by stating that they couldn’t possibly be thinking that Egypt will aid them. That once mighty nation has become a paper tiger (36:6). The Assyrian commander then steps into the religious realm and observes that no help from your God will be forthcoming since King Hezekiah destroyed all the hilltop altars in the region. Hezekiah did so to diminish idol worship in his realm, but the Assyrians don’t understand that (36:7). Finally, the Rabshekeh tries to terrorize the onlookers by belittling Israel’s military capability. “If King Sennacherib gives you 2,000 horses, you still cannot defend yourselves” (36:8-9). King Hezekiah’s advisers are not giving in to the Rabshakeh’s threats. In desperation, he speaks over the heads of the officials and addresses the crowd directly. He promises them economic prosperity if they surrender. Astoundingly, the rabble is not swayed. Earlier, King Hezekiah commanded them not to respond to the Assyrian threats and promises. They obey him and stoically remain silent (36:13-21).
The people surmount their fears and dispense with easy answers. Instead, they trust their king. Still, there is no getting around the gravity of the present moment. Hezekiah’s representatives return and report to him, yet not before they tear their robes to acknowledge their grief and to signal war is imminent (36:22).
The Great Isaiah Scroll found in Qumran cave number 1
INSIGHT
Hezekiah
Hezekiah became king of Judah after his father Ahaz died. Twenty-five years old when he ascended the throne, he was the thirteenth descendent of David to rule in Jerusalem, and he reigned for twenty-nine years from 715-686 BC. He inherited a subjugated nation, as his father had made Judah a client state of Assyria, requiring payments of steep annual tributes. Hezekiah was determined to break free of Assyria’s dominance. In 701 BC, it looked as if Jerusalem would be conquered by King Sennacherib of Assyria. However, when a mysterious plague wiped out 185,000 Assyrian soldiers, the remaining forces marched home to Nineveh, saving the capital city of Judah.
Perhaps Hezekiah and Josiah who followed him fifty years later are best remembered for their religious reforms. Upon ascending the throne, Hezekiah insists that the temple be cleaned from top to bottom and purified of all pagan influences. Once that was accomplished, the king sends his soldiers into the countryside to destroy all the “high places” of pagan worship. Assyria, it turns out, did not only bring a large, terrifying army, the invaders also brought their fervent worship of Ashur, their national deity.
The king is looking up! Isaiah 37:1-38
King Hezekiah recognizes the enormity of his situation and that his nation’s future hangs in the balance. Feeling the onus of his responsibility, he tears his royal robes, dons sackcloth, and immediately sets off to the temple (37:1-2). Stripped of outside resources and bereft of personal ingenuity, he admits his vulnerability by dispensing with his royal regalia. Hezekiah then sends a message to the Prophet Isaiah, which illuminates the king’s faith, ‘It may be that the LORD heard the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the King of Assyria has sent to mock the living God…’(37:4). Hezekiah doesn’t for a moment defend his own vanity. His concern is that Sennacherib has dishonored the LORD.
When the king’s message reaches Isaiah, his response mirrors that of the Assyrian Rabshekah. Just as Sennacherib’s envoy announced, ‘Thus says the great king,’ Isaiah counters, ‘Thus says the LORD’ (36:4 & 37:5). The prophet construes a sort of verbal diptych. Isaiah goes on to tell Hezekiah that Sennacherib will be no threat to Jerusalem. He will leave Judah to attend to urgent business back at his capital in Nineveh. Once there, he will be killed. (37:7). Sennacherib will, in fact, be killed in a coup orchestrated by his own sons. Also, Hezekiah soon learns that the Assyrians have abandoned their fight against Lachish to cut off a possible attack from Egypt. That puts the Assyrian army ten miles further away from Jerusalem (37:8).
Before Hezekiah can breathe a sigh of relief, he receives a nasty letter from King Sennacherib, assuring the Judean king – no matter what he has heard – Jerusalem is still in his sights:
‘Don’t let your God, on whom you so naively lean, deceive you, promising that Jerusalem won’t fall to the king of Assyria. Use your head! Look around at what the kings of Assyria have done all over the world—one country after another devastated! And do you think you’re going to get off? Have any of the gods of any of these countries ever stepped in and saved them.’ 37:9-13 Message
Rather than panic, Hezekiah spreads Sennacherib’s letter on the stone floor of the temple as an intercession to the LORD. The king prays confidently that the gods of those other nations that Assyria has defeated are nothing more than carved wood and stone – not the living God who created all that is. Then Hezekiah beseeches God to act to save Jerusalem – not for his country alone – but that ‘all the kingdoms of the earth may know you alone are the LORD’(37:18-20). God’s response is prompt, fierce, and to the point, ‘Sennacherib, because you have raged against me, I will put my hook in your nose and a bit in your mouth. I will turn you back to where you’ve come’ (37:29). God’s promise to turn away Assyria from Jerusalem is historically verified. Miraculously, a deadly malady sweeps through the Assyrian army killing many thousands of them. After years of Assyrian domination and threat, the dreaded army heads home to Nineveh, where King Sennacherib meets his prophesied end (37:36-38). The efficacy of prayer has rarely been reported so poignantly – even in the Bible!
The rest of the story Isaiah 38:1 – 39:8
Those of us old enough to remember Paul Harvey’s syndicated radio shows will recall how he would offer his audience a well-known historical fact only to say, “Stay tuned to hear the rest of the story.” Chapters 38 and 39 fill in the rest of the story for the dramatic events we just read. King Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem are on the verge of being conquered by King Sennacherib’s Assyrian horde when suddenly a mysterious plague wipes out nearly 200,000 of Sennacherib’s soldiers. Desperate to save their diminished army, they turn for home, leaving Jerusalem untouched. As dramatic as that sounds, it really is just part of the story. Chapters 38 and 39 reveal what happened previous to Assyria’s assault and withdrawal.
In 701, just months before Sennacherib surrounds Jerusalem to begin his assault, King Hezekiah falls mortally ill, so ill in fact, the LORD tells Isaiah to inform the king ‘to get his house in order, for you shall die and not recover’ (38:1). Hezekiah turns his face to the wall in utter despair – but he also prays. The prayer is not nearly as ornate as the one he will offer later in 37:14-20, rather it is a prayer of resigned desperation. Still facing the wall, he simply implores, ‘Remember, LORD, how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart and have done what is good in your sight.’ The king then begins to weep uncontrollably. (38:2-3). The LORD hears Hezekiah’s simple prayer and, through Isaiah, promises the king fifteen more years of life and that He will save Jerusalem from the looming Assyrian invasion (37:5-6).
No wonder Hezekiah goes directly to the temple to pray when Sennacherib’s host of warriors encircle Jerusalem’s walls. The LORD’s reprieve is temporary, however. Hezekiah gets fifteen more years – no more. Furthermore, when he dies in 687, the countdown to Jerusalem’s annihilation begins. In one hundred years, another northern power, Babylon, will decimate Jerusalem and deport all its leading citizens.
In Chapter 39, we see how King Hezekiah’s foolishness becomes the doorway to Jerusalem’s destruction as well as the doorway to the second major movement of the Book of Isaiah: the rise of Babylon. For Hezekiah’s part, his major mistake starts innocently enough. In 705 BC, just four years before Assyria is knocking on Jerusalem’s gates and having already flattened most every other Judean city, King Marduk-Baladan of Babylon visits Hezekiah at his Jerusalem palace. The Babylonian king visits Hezekiah to assemble a coalition against Assyria. Immensely honored to be entertaining such a grand dignitary, Hezekiah shows off all the ‘silver, gold, spices, precious oils, and armaments in his storehouses’ (39:2).
The Prophet Isaiah gets to the party late and is horrified by what the king has done. His word from the LORD is not nearly so comforting this time: ‘Thus says the LORD, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and all that your ancestors have stored until this day, shall be carried into Babylon: nothing shall be left. Some of your own sons who are born to you shall be taken away; they shall serve as eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon’ (39:5-7).
Hezekiah’s response to the LORD’s verdict is rather empty-headed. Sounding like Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after his third visit with Adolph Hitler in September 1938, ‘There will be peace and security in my days’ (39:8). But not much longer. Hezekiah, who steadily modeled faithfulness to God, conceded to his own ego and failed to consult the LORD. The result will be devastating and a reminder that righteous governments fall more due to inattention than to revolution. Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1932, a country whose constitution was one of the most democratic in the world, and not a shot was fired…until later!
Hitler’s official portrait in 1938, six years after he maneuvered into power.
Nazism is a reminder that righteous governments fall more due to inattention than to revolution. Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1932, a country whose constitution was one of the most democratic in the world, and not a shot was fired…until later!
Athletic Christianity
Hezekiah, even with his lapse during the Babylonian delegations’ visit, is distinguished as a king of Israel who prayed. He prayed spontaneously on his death bed, and he prayed eloquently in the face of Assyria’s military aggression. Unlike his father Ahaz, who patently refused to pray for a sign from God when Judah was in dire straits; for Hezekiah prayer was a natural extension of himself. So, how do we become like Hezekiah? How do we become persons of prayer?
Prayer is hard. Inner-city ministry, African missions, soup kitchen work, teenage ski trips – all are strenuous Christian enterprises. Yet nothing in our faith is more challenging than praying. How ironic it is that Christians are known more by prayer than even Bible reading, and yet most of us feel so inadequate in that vital expression of our faith. Prayer is far easier to study than do. When the subject of praying comes up, we often feel like hypocrites, knowing full well that outside of Sunday worship, we are infrequent practitioners.
What can we learn from Hezekiah to get started praying? First, Hezekiah knew that he was surrounded by God, that the LORD was the author of all that is and the ground of all being. ‘You are enthroned above the angels, and You have made heaven and earth,’ he prayed. Thomas Merton (1915-1968), the modern American Trappist monk, declared that when we pray, “you’ve ceased to exist as a separate, grasping, ego.” In other words, when we finally get down to praying, we are acknowledging that the Reality in which we live, move, and have our being is all God and not the indifferent secular world shere we spend most of our time. To turn to God in prayer is to come to our senses and experience Reality. As Jesus repeatedly asserted, the kingdom of God embraces us if we dare look through the mirage we’ve settled for. The Psalmist writing about the same time as Hezekiah’s reign rapturously describes the reality Jesus expressed:
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night’,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you. Psalm 139:7-12
Second, Hezekiah prays that he wants to live according to God’s leading. ‘Remember, O LORD, how I walked in faithfulness in Your sight and have done what is good in Your sight.’ Sometime ago, I was humbled and moved by a commitment made by Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. The congregation has an average attendance of 30,000 worshippers and satellite campuses across the world. While the church could have become triumphalist and self-satisfied, they instead made this simple commitment: Let’s do what God is blessing instead of asking God to bless what we are doing. How easy it is to throw up a quick prayer to God to bless actions we’ve already set in motion – a business pursuit or gain an acceptance for a child in a selective university or open the door for a new job or any number of seemingly worthy endeavors. The right path of prayer is to first believe that God has already ordained the best path for us to take and then pray that we will walk in His ways. We must not give in to the persistent pull of our egos. About 200 years after Hezekiah and Isaiah, the LORD assured the Prophet Jeremiah that his best days were already planned:
For surely, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord. Jeremiah 29:11-14
Third, Hezekiah turns to the LORD in his personal time of great need – when he is dying. On his bed, his face turned toward the wall, the king can barely get the words out and begins to weep bitterly. Even though Hezekiah knew that God was the creator of all that is, and He set the times and places for all nations and people – the king was equally confident that the LORD cared about him personally. Furthermore, Hezekiah knew that the LORD discerned his tear-laden prayer. St. Paul goes further to insist that on those deeply painful occasions when we cannot even conjure the words to pray, the Holy Spirit prays for us:
The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Romans 8:26-27
The next time we are tempted to think, “We don’t have a prayer,” trust Hezekiah…because we do!
Next Time: Read Isaiah 40:1-48:22 — A King to Comfort My People
[1] Bo Lim, “Zion’s Final Destiny: Isaiah 34:1-39:8,” Seattle Pacific University Lectio Divina, https://spu.edu/lectio/zions-final-destiny/.
Thank you, Patrick! Want to read this often!!!
Joan W
Sadly, it is so easy to let the “indifferent secular world” dominate our thoughts and cares. Thanks for these timeless and timely anxiety-allaying reminders, Pat.