“Hezekiah turned his
face to the wall and prayed to the Lord.
Then Isaiah said, ‘Prepare a bandage
made of figs.’
They did so and put it on the swelling, at which point Hezekiah
started getting better.”
2 Kings 20:2, 7 (Common English Bible)
Theodore
Roosevelt, our nation’s 26th president, was born a frail, sickly
child with debilitating asthma. At seventeen, Roosevelt was as tall as he would
grow, five feet eight inches, and was just shy of 125 pounds. His health, a
continual concern of his parents, prompted Theodore Senior to decide that the
time had come to “present a major challenge to his son.”[i]
At the age of twelve, Theodore – nicknamed as a child, Teedie – was told by his
father that he had a great mind, but not the body. Without the help of the
body, the mind could not go as far as it should. “You must make your body. It
is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.”[ii]
Teedie made the commitment to his father that he would do so. The promise was
adhered to with bulldog tenacity. The young Theodore Roosevelt took personal
responsibility for his physical health and development.
Hezekiah,
king of Judah, became a very sick man during his leadership. He had a wound
that had become so serious that his spiritual counselor, a prophet named
Isaiah, informed him that he should put his affairs in order because he was
dying. That diagnosis came like a bolt of lightning to Hezekiah. In
desperation, Hezekiah “turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord.” He
pled with the Lord to reward his faithfulness as a man of God and to spare his
life. Then, the scriptures tell us, Hezekiah cried and cried. Before Isaiah had
left the courtyard of the king’s residence, God sent him back to Hezekiah with
another and more hopeful message: “I have heard your prayers and have seen your
tears. So now I’m going to heal you. I will add fifteen years to your life.”[iii]
Then follows something that is most curious: Isaiah orders a bandage made of
figs be placed on the swelling. Hezekiah prayed and Isaiah prepared a bandage:
prayer and responsibility.
With
powerful clarity, this passage of scripture teaches us that two things were
responsible for Hezekiah’s rapid recovery: prayer and a bandage, faith and personal
responsibility. If the king was to recover his health, both were required. The
Bible refuses to indicate which of the two was the more important. We cannot
know which was the most effectual. The message is that without either of them
Hezekiah would have died in the prime of his life and at a time when his
country most needed his leadership. The power of the Assyian king, and his
armies, threatened the peace Judah. The death of Hezekiah would have made Judah
most vulnerable to their enemies. With his health restored, Hezekiah was able
to defend his nation from the Assyian threat. This story provides an important
lesson for God’s people: While prayer is essential it must never be made a
substitute for personal responsibility.
There are
people who make the mistake of choosing between the two, prayer and
responsibility. We have seen in the news recently where parents of a particular
Christian sect refused medical treatment for their young son because they chose
the avenue of prayer alone. A choice between faith and medicine is simply not
supported by this Bible lesson. Each is a gift of God and each has its own
power. Faith and medicine are both means of healing. They belong together. Both
are agents of a compassionate God. Prayer and personal responsibility cooperate
closely in effecting the highest well-being of those who struggle with illness.
This story from 2 Kings reminds us not to neglect either. The sixteenth century
French physician, Paré, reminds us of this truth when he wrote, “I dressed the
wound and God healed it.”
Joy,
[i] Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New
York: Random House, 1979), 32.
[ii] Morris, 32.
[iii] Portions of 2 Kings
20:5, 6.
No comments:
Post a Comment