In the Hezekiah saga of Isaiah in my AM reading. Reflecting today on the poetry - and more generally speaking - the art, prose, music and poignant beauty that only emerge when a pen is dipped in the deep inkwell of pain and suffering. How many songs would never have been written?
Isaiah 38 records the poem Hezekiah wrote in the wake of his illness when the Lord had told him to set his house in order because he’d soon die. He wept bitterly & pled for God to change the outcome and God granted him 15 more years. The song he wrote visits the depths & heights.
A few lines…
“In the prime of my life… I am deprived of the rest of my years…I have rolled up my life like a weaver; [God] cuts me off from the loom… I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak looking upward. Lord, I am oppressed; support me. What can I say? He has spoken to me.
“and He himself has done it. I walk along slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul. Lord, by such things people live and in every one of them my spirit finds life; You have restored me to health and let me live.” Stick around long enough to read this last part...
“Indeed it was for my own well-being that I had such intense bitterness but your love has delivered me from the Pit of destruction for You have thrown all my sins behind your back.” So gorgeous. Hezekiah now personifies death: “For Sheol cannot thank you; Death cannot praise you
Those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. The living, only the living can thank you as I do today...the Lord is ready to save me; we will play string instruments all the days of our lives at the house of the Lord.”
You see, there’s no song in the night...
...without the dark.
My prayer for us all is that we’ll be delivered by God from our varied sufferings & pain just as we’re asking. But, until then, or, if not at all, let us ask of Him what he will surely give: treasures in darkness.
Dip that pen in ink.
That brush in paint.
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