Fifteen More Years

Context

King Hezekiah is one of the good kings of Judah, and that's the high bar, not the low one. He tears down idols, reopens the temple, prays his way through an Assyrian siege. The kind of king people write songs about.

Then he gets sick. The skin-boil, fever kind of sick that in 700 BC means you are not making it to next week. And the prophet Isaiah walks in with the worst house call imaginable.

Story

Isaiah goes, put your house in order, you are going to die, you will not recover. Then he leaves.

Hezekiah turns his face to the wall. Not toward anyone in the room. He doesn't want this part watched. And he weeps, and prays a prayer that is barely a prayer: remember me, remember I walked with you, remember I tried.

Isaiah hasn't even crossed the courtyard before God stops him and sends him back. Tell him I heard him. I saw his tears. I'm adding fifteen years. Hezekiah asks for a sign, and the shadow on the sundial moves backward ten steps.

"Cosmic receipts."

Then come the visitors from Babylon, and Hezekiah shows them everything in the treasury. Isaiah tells him it will all be carried off one day. Hezekiah's answer is that the word is good, because it won't happen while he's alive. He got fifteen more years and spent them small.

What We Learn

This is one of the rare times God changes an outcome, and the man who got the miracle used the extra time on himself. The whole sky bent backward so one king could have a few more years.

Extra time isn't a reward. It's the same question being asked again.

What do you do when you get the years back?