For your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matthew 6:8.

My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. Matthew 26:38.

This chapter, 2 Kings 18, reminded me more than any other that we can turn to God with our whole heart and be transformed seeking His wisdom and that is good. And we are still human and flawed and we can rejoice in that. God – Father, Son, Spirit – is Almighty and to Him we turn in need in every age. In our Friday morning prayer group we were reminded that God is in control of our life and of our death and we have nothing to fear from Him. As I sat in prayer after that meeting, feeling comforted, I couldn’t help but be aware of how much I want to comfort God. We come to Him with needs so pressing, fears so great named and unnamed. He bears them all. He asked the disciples to stay near while He went to pray when His time to be turned over was near. Can we stay near to Him when the things done by humanity are filled with sorrow? He comforts us. Can we comfort Him?

Hezekiah was king of Judah when Israel was taken away from their land to captivity by Assyria. Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. v. 5. He even removed the high places and destroyed the bronze snake Moses made that the people had turned into an idol. v. 4.

The king of Assyria, Shalmaneser, sent his supreme commander, field commander and chief officer and an army to surround Jerusalem. He taunted the people watching from the walls of the city. But if you say to me, “We are depending on the Lord our God”… – isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed?…Have I come to attack and destroy this place without word from the Lord?…Hear the word of the great king, king of Assyria!…Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?…How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand? v. 17-35.

No. No other god ever delivered its people.

But the people remained silent and said nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, “Do not answer him.” v. 36.

In drawing near to God Almighty, Hezekiah was learning about our God who delivers. He had the whole history of Israel to know that our God delivers. He didn’t know that God would love us so much He would become one of us, born of a virgin as a baby. He grew; He experienced the suffering of His people, and was familiar with our pain…surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. Isaiah 53:1-9. Father, Son, Holy Spirit lived that with us and love us. If only the king of Assyria had known; one day he will. He, too, will be delivered by the only God who can and in great love.

Our Father knows what we need and we need Him and His love. Jesus keeps watch with us still. I trust God who delivers us from all evil because He loves. So I stay with Him and keep watch with Him praying for all of us and in that know His comfort. Thank You, Lord, for so great a love. Teach us. We need You.