The sign that the Lord spared King Hezekiah’s life

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1 In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.

 2 Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the Lord,

 3 And said, Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.

 4 ¶Then came the word of the Lord to Isaiah, saying,

 5 Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years.

 6 And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city.

 7 And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken;

 8 Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down. (Isaiah 38:1-8)

In this story Hezekia was sick and Isaiah told him he would die.  (That would be shocking news to anyone.)  Then Hezekiah prayed for his life to be spared and the Lord answered his prayers, and gave him a sign as a promise.  The sign the Lord gives (v7-8) is very interesting.

The promise the Lord gave to Hezekiah was 15 more years of life.  The sign was to be that the shadow of the sundial would go back 10 degrees.  That might seem like an odd sign to give.  A moving shadow.  But behind that moving shadow was something very unusual on an astronomical scale.  It would look like the sun was moving, but we know it was really the earth that moved, that it slowed imperceptibly, then stopped, and reversed its rotation until it had gone 10 degrees backward, then slowed, stopped, and began rotating in the usual direction again, all without any detrimental inertial effects on the earth’s inhabitants. 

Amazing, huh?  Yes, and it is also amazing that all that was done for the sake of one man.  Doesn’t that almost seem like…overkill?   But I suppose that shows just how much the Lord loves the one. 

I also realized that the sign was actually meant to teach Hezekiah something about the Lord’s power.  Not simply that the Lord could move astronomical bodies hither and yon at will, but that the Lord really did have the power to lengthen Hezekiah’s life.  Turning the shadow of the sundial back 10 degrees had the effect of lengthening that day, so Hezekiah was to understand that if the Lord could lengthen one of Hezekiah’s days, He could and would lengthen Hezekiah’s life as promised.

To me this teaches me that the Lord has control over my life span and while I do my part to take care of my body, ultimately the Lord is in charge of how long I live. 

An under-the-weather day

Yesterday I woke up with the most bizarre of sicknesses. It wasn’t a fever, because my thermometer said 96 degrees. It wasn’t the flu, because I didn’t really throw up. (I had the dry heaves once, but nothing really came of it.) It wasn’t a cold, because I didn’t have a runny nose. It wasn’t a sinus infection, because my boogers weren’t green. It wasn’t a cough or a sore throat. I didn’t know what it was, so I gave it a name based on the symptoms I had.

I decided to call it “Burpy Vertigo”. That’s exactly what it was. I burped a lot and I was incredibly dizzy. (Warning: I am about to go into detail...)

The burping was really strange. I felt like I had an endless supply of air bubbles to get rid of and it wouldn’t come out with one big EERRRRRRRRRP. No, it had to be removed piecemeal. About every few minutes I had to have a 30 second burping session to get rid of the discomfort. I was afraid to swallow my saliva for fear I would somehow swallow more air and make it worse.

The vertigo was also very weird. I had vertigo even while lying in bed. I couldn’t lie on my back and look at the ceiling, because the world would begin to spin in the most unaccountably vicious way. I couldn’t even turn my head up to a 45 degree angle because the room would begin to revolve. I had lie on my side and keep one ear flush with the pillow at all times.

I was a little worried about the vertigo. My mom went on a cruise back in the late ‘90s and came home with vertigo that lasted for a year and I really hoped that a case of year-long dizziness hadn’t come to call on me too (though I had done no cruising whatsoever). Fortunately I happened to talk on the phone with my church choir director who, when I told her what I called my malady, said, “Oh! I had the same thing earlier this week!” Aha! It was only a bug that was going around.

In the morning when I was lying on my side, I dutifully opened my scriptures and they came to Ether 3 and I read this verse:

O Lord, thou hast said that we must be encompassed about by the floods. Now behold, O Lord, and do not be angry with thy servant because of his weakness before thee; for we know that thou art holy and dwellest in the heavens, and that we are unworthy before thee; because of the fall our natures have become evil continually; nevertheless, O Lord, thou hast given us a commandment that we must call upon thee, that from thee we may receive according to our desires. (Ether 3:2)

I read that plea of the brother of Jared that the Lord not be angry because of his weakness and I thought of my sickness that I had suddenly hit by and I felt to echo that prayer in my own way. O Lord, be not angry because of my mortal weakness and sickness, and how I can not serve thee today as I had hoped and planned yesterday. All I could do was lie in bed and play games on my palm pilot. (I think I played 37 games of Bejeweled.) It was an act of bravery just to get up briefly and get the phone and call a few people to let them know I couldn’t go to cub scout pack meeting or help babysit.

I had to count my blessings though. 1) School hadn’t started yet, so I wasn’t missing classes. School starts in 3 days and I could have gotten sick then. 2) I had a nice bed to lie in, with warm blankets. 3) I wasn’t missing work. We had intensive tutor training just the two day before and it could have hit then, but it didn’t. 4) I wasn’t feeling sick to my stomach like my choir director had, so I knew I would probably be feeling better the next day, whereas she had it for 3 or 4 days.

The dizziness was so odd that I really wondered what was causing it. I knew the inner ear was somehow affected, because that is what facilitates our balance and perception of up, down, and sideways. How nice it is when our inner ear works and we can walk straight and ride bikes and do all sorts of other things!

I think our conscience is kind of like our inner ear too. It tells us which way is good and which way is bad. We are out in a dizzying world, one that reels to and fro like a drunken man, one that likes to call good things bad and bad things good. It calls things “wicked” when it approves and says “great” sarcastically when it doesn’t.

I know that we can find rest from this moral vertigo when we come to Christ. Repenting of our sins heals our conscience, that spiritual inner ear, and we come to know what kind of person He was, we learn to see the world through His eyes with vision that is always steady.