Pressed To The Wall

“Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD…And Hezekiah wept bitterly…This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: ‘I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.’” Isaiah 38:2,3b

On the hills of his great defeat of Assyria, Hezekiah receives a devastating blow when Isaiah, the prophet informs him that God wanted the king to put his house in order for he was going to die. The verse states that “Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD.” The tenderness of this verse makes me feel that I have interrupted a very private moment between Hezekiah and God. His world has just fallen apart and no royal court alive can help him escape this battle.

Like Hezekiah, we have all had instances where we are the recipient of some type of communication that takes the very life from us, drops us to our knees and our nightmare begins. We realize that life for which we have known has taken on a new kind of normal and we scramble to find order in our chaos. We are acutely aware of our powerlessness and turn to the wall within ourselves with urgency for answers, comfort and aloneness with God. We plead our case to God and assure Him that if He will …..then we will….

In this instance, God extended his life by 15 years so we can assume Hezekiah’s prayer request didn’t change the will of God but worked into His will. Being in a family where cancer was the vessel for which one family member went into the eternal and another family member is suffering it would be easy for me to question why God heals in one family but not the other. Applying God’s will in one situation to another will never bring the hope and comfort for which He desires us to experience. It will only tear down trust and faith in a God who always saves in the big picture on His terms and in His perfect manner according to His will.

We cannot know why God chooses to answer certain prayers and others go unanswered as we define answered and unanswered. However, we can know with absolute certainty that He is always good, always loving and always right.