UNEXPECTEDLY to be overtaken by serious illness, and suddenly to face death, is an evil, against which the prayer of even the most devoted of God’s children goes out.
More pious kings than Hezekiah have not sat on David’s throne, and yet, when Hezekiah became at once deathly sick and he suddenly came to face the valley of the shadow of death, he complained and groaned before his God, and the Lord was moved by the prayer, to remove the plague from him and to save him from death.
So he spoke later in his prayer of thanksgiving: “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes lifted themselves on high to the Lord” (Is. 38, 14. Dutch version).
It was dreadful to him to see his life loosen itself from him, and it seemed to him as though God cut him off, as a weaver his web.
Whatever the nature of the plague was that troubled him, Hezekiah knew that it was the Lord, Who took hold of him in his sickness, threw him down, and now from moment to moment was busy, in taking away his life from him, and to destroy his earthly existence. Therefore he exclaimed even twice: “From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me” (Is. 38, 12), as though he felt, that, if the plague were not removed, he would no more fetch the evening.
Hezekiah fell thus in God’s hand.
He himself saw the malignant boil, that threatened to poison his blood; and he truly made use of the means, advised him by Isaiah, by putting a lump of figs upon the festering swelling; but with all this Hezekiah clearly sensed, that he had to do with his God; that God was in the plague; and that the arm of the Lord weighed heavily upon him, to oppress him even unto death.
THIS stands written also for your sake.
Not that you might hope for a miracle, as took place with Hezekiah. There is no more prophet on earth, who, like Isaiah, brings you revelations from God, regarding your lot in life and the hour of your death.
A promise of still fifteen years of life, as came to Hezekiah, cannot occur now. And a sign such as was given Hezekiah, that the shadow on the sun-dial went back ten degrees, has, after Revelation was once ended and thus closed, never fallen to the share of any one.
Do not therefore in such dreadful moments detain your soul with this. That would be the abuse of God’s Word; confusing yourself with fanaticism; and would end in nothing, save bitter, crying disappointment, till at length you would anyway, but then in despair, go into death.
But from Hezekiah learn, that with all such plagues you at once perceive clearly, that you have to do with the Lord your God; and turn yourself with all your agony of death, cast yourself with all the anxiety of your soul, without hesitating for one moment, upon your Covenant-God.
Not first all sorts of other things, and then, when all that other does not help, at length appeal to God. No, but at the first approaches of anxiety, at the first trembling at death, at once seek your refuge with the Holy One, and in your deathly sickness itself you will feel the dreadful hand of God’s holy majesty.
In moments of such deep gripping seriousness watch especially against all division and doubleness in your soul. Hezekiah felt God’s almighty hand in the throbbing of the malignant boil. He felt how God was already busily engaged, in cutting, as a weaver his web, the texture between his body and his soul. He felt presently, how God’s power operated in that lump of figs, to draw this poison from the boil. And just because he was aware of God all around him, saw God’s power in that plague and in that medicine, therefore he did not let go of God for one moment, but called and moaned, and refreshed his troubled soul in fellowship with his Shepherd and his God.
IN all such moments of agony of death that suddenly come upon you, it all depends therefore upon piety of heart. And that piety of heart you cannot at that moment suddenly as by magic work in your soul, but in that critical hour you can let it operate in you only, when a truly pious life lies back of you. Piety taken in its deepest sense, that in your soul consciously you continually practice fellowship with the Eternal Being.
To miss that fellowship, and ability to endure that lack of fellowship with the Eternal Being, is in God’s children deepest sin.
Then one lives hours together, half a day, sometimes a whole day, without so much as a thought of the Name of the Lord passing through the soul. In everything busy, one forgets his God, and lives without Him. And then, yea, then prayer is made, and hymns of praise are sung; but even in prayer thoughts wander, and in song words are uttered, in which the soul has no part.
And, of course, when amidst such conditions Death suddenly climbs in at your window, and with the death sweat already on your forehead you lie down upon your bed, the soul becomes confused, and cannot at once inlive in a piety, which is foreign to it.
The body then demands so dreadfully much of the soul. Thousand questions storm through the troubled heart. Everything about you frightens you. And you tremble with fear at the knowledge so suddenly thrust upon you, that you are to die.
And then everything divides itself before you. On one side the deadly plague, and the physician, and the medicine, and all that people do, to come to your help; and far away from all this, high above you, that God Whom you had forgotten, and to Whom you now call, but with a muffled sound, that despondingly falls back upon your own soul.
And this was spared Hezekiah. He too wept and cried like a child, he too chattered as a swallow, and all his crying was, that God might spare him; but his God was no stranger to him. To the eye of his soul it was all one: the power of God in his plague; the hand of his God busy to cut off his life; the working of his God in that lump of figs; and the listening ear of his God, in fatherly compassion, ready to hear the complaint of his soul.
MOST trying is such a sudden facing of death, when it overtakes you when you are alone, as often happens in case of a shock, or accident. The most dreadful above all, when, as often happens in great cities with its high buildings, fire breaks out and the way out is obstructed, and one faces the flame, which encroaches upon him, and there is no way of escape.
This is already far less, when a pestilence breaks out. Not as though this were not dreadful; but because such an epidemic plague sends its messenger ahead.
Days, weeks before you hear from far-off lands, that the plague is approaching, and that God the Lord sent out the angel of His wrath, to call the nations to seriousness and to rouse them from their sleep of death.
And herein is a grace of your God, which you must not despise.
For then He does not overtake you as a lion, which leaps upon his prey, but warns you from afar, tells you that He is coming; and cries: “To-day, while you hear my voice.”
Herein is this compassion, that thereby your God offers you the opportunity, to prepare yourself for the worst. That in case you had unaccustomed yourself to your God, you turn again to Him. That in case you had estranged yourself from your God, to turn away from your wanderings, and seek again His holy fellowship.
A grace, that avails nothing with respect to the world which hardens itself, but which so often gave the glorious impulse to unstable souls, which ever yet hesitated, to bring about heart-felt and definite conversion. And a grace, which, above all, always showed itself so effective in calling God’s children, who had sunken away into apathy, back to a condition of living, sensitive piety.
AND O, then that return to humble, sensitive piety on the part of God’s saints bears again such beautiful fruit.
Not alone in that they heed again the commandments of God, and thus also according to the sixth commandment, they avoid and prevent everything, whereby recklessly they might endanger their own life or the life of their neighbor; but above all, that in everything, they begin to see their God again in the plague that approaches; in the prosperity, which they still enjoy; in the life of wife and children; more still in the inner motions of their soul.
Then thought is taken again of God; then there rises again, also when the lips are silent, a song of praise for His infinite compassion in the Son of His love; and then the soul is moved to pray without ceasing, that God’s hiddenness might again be upon our tent, and our own soul and the soul of our dear ones might be prepared, in case He so appoints it, to meet our God also in His bitter wrath.
And if then it pleases God, to overtake us with His plague, or take away from our home, as a sheep is snatched from the fold, then the transition in our soul is no longer needed. Then death as it comes is no more a thief that breaks in and surprises us, but a messenger from our God, whose arrival we have expected. Then there is fellowship with the Eternal Being, even when things are at their blackest, even when the waves and billows of the Almighty go over us. Yea, then our soul knows, that even death cannot separate us from that fellowship, but on the contrary brings it to us yet more intimately, and then forever.
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