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caring about the future

2 Kings 20:1-21 (JDV).

2 Kings 20:1 In those days Hezekiah became terminally ill. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came and said to him, “This is what Yahveh says: ‘Set your house in order, for you are about to die; you will not recover.'”
2 Kings 20:2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to Yahveh,
2 Kings 20:3 “Please, Lord, remember how I have walked before you faithfully and wholeheartedly and have done what pleases you.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
2 Kings 20:4 Isaiah had not yet gone out of the inner courtyard when the word of Yahveh came to him:
2 Kings 20:5 “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, ‘This is what Yahveh God of your ancestor David says: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to Yahveh’s temple.
2 Kings 20:6 I will add fifteen years to your life. I will rescue you and this city from the grasp of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.'”
2 Kings 20:7 Then Isaiah said, “Bring a lump of pressed figs.” So, they brought it and applied it to his infected skin, and he recovered.
2 Kings 20:8 Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, “What is the sign that Yahveh will heal me and that I will go up to Yahveh’s temple on the third day?”
2 Kings 20:9 Isaiah said, “This is the sign to you from Yahveh that he will do what he has promised: Should the shadow go ahead ten steps or go back ten steps?”
2 Kings 20:10 Then Hezekiah answered, “It’s easy for the shadow to lengthen ten steps. No, let the shadow go back ten steps.”
2 Kings 20:11 So the prophet Isaiah called out to Yahveh, and he brought the shadow back the ten steps it had descended on the stairway of Ahaz.
2 Kings 20:12 At that time Merodach-baladan son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah since he heard that he had been sick.
2 Kings 20:13 Hezekiah listened to the letters and showed the envoys his whole treasure house — the silver, the gold, the spices, and the precious oil — and his armory, and everything that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his palace and in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.
2 Kings 20:14 Then the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah and asked him, “Where did these men come from and what did they say to you?” Hezekiah replied, “They came from a distant country, from Babylon.”
2 Kings 20:15 Isaiah asked, “What have they seen in your palace?” Hezekiah answered, “They have seen everything in my palace. There isn’t anything in my treasuries that I didn’t show them.”
2 Kings 20:16 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of Yahveh:
2 Kings 20:17 ‘Look, the days are coming when everything in your palace and all that your fathers have stored up until today will be carried off to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says Yahveh.
2 Kings 20:18 ‘Some of your descendants — who come from you, whom you father — will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.'”
2 Kings 20:19 Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of Yahveh that you have spoken is good,” for he thought: Why not, if there will be peace and security during my lifetime?
2 Kings 20:20 The rest of the events of Hezekiah’s reign, along with all his might and how he made the pool and the tunnel and brought water into the city, are written in the Historical Record of Judah’s Kings.
2 Kings 20:21 Hezekiah rested with his fathers, and his son Manasseh became king in his place.

caring about the future

If good king Hezekiah can be faulted with anything, it is this: He did not care about the future enough. He wanted healing, prayed for it, and got it. But when the Babylonian envoys came, he was not careful enough with them. He let them see all his treasuries. Isaiah warned that someday all those treasuries would be confiscated by Babylon. Even some of Hezekiah’s sons would be carried into exile. Hezekiah said that it would be OK as long as there was peace in his lifetime. We need to pray and plan for the future. It needs to belong to God as well as the present.

LORD, give us eyes to see and knees to pray for the future.