A doctor once told a patient, "You need to stop smoking, avoid alcohol, eat plain food, go to bed early, and stay away from too much excitement." The man asked, "Will that make me live longer?" The doctor said, "I'm not sure, but it will certainly feel longer."
Most of us would gladly accept the miracle King Hezekiah received in the first reading: fifteen extra years. Although, knowing us, we would probably have a few questions first. "Lord, are those fifteen healthy years? Will my knees still work? And does Medicare know about this?"
We are always asking for more all the time, more money, more leisure. More time with our children. More time with our parents. More time to travel, to pray, more time to become the person we have been promising to become for the last twenty years.
And when we actually receive more time, we have a remarkable gift for wasting it. We can sit at the same dinner table with the people we love and somehow everyone is looking in a different direction. We can spend ten minutes searching for our glasses while they are sitting on top of our head. We say, "One of these days, I need to call my brother," as though God has officially added "one of these days" to the calendar.
God's Time Is Perfect
That is what makes Hezekiah's story so interesting. God gives him fifteen additional years. But later, in Isaiah chapter 39 we will read, the same king proudly shows off all his treasures to the delegation from Babylon, his silver, his gold, his armory, everything. The man who wept before God when he thought he was dying becomes rather impressed with himself once he knows he is living. More time did not automatically make him wiser or better.
A few years ago, an Australian palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware published what she had heard from years of sitting with the dying in her blog post which became the book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, 2012. Not one person told her they wished they had worked more, or won more arguments, or answered one more email or made more money. They wished they had let themselves be happier. They wished they had stayed in touch with friends. They wished they had let themselves feel, and love, and rest, before it was too late. It turns out the deathbed is a remarkably honest place, and what it teaches lines up almost exactly with what Isaiah is trying to tell the king: a longer life is not necessarily a deeper life.
The sign God gives Hezekiah isn't a voice from heaven or a vision. It's a staircase, what scholars believe was a stepped sundial built by Hezekiah's father, King Ahaz, the kind used across the ancient Near East to mark the hours by counting shadow on stone. God moves the shadow backward ten steps. He changes the shadow. He doesn't give Hezekiah a different life. He gives him the same life, seen differently, for just a little longer.
The Extraordinary in the Ordinary
Sometimes the holiest moments are very ordinary: sitting a little longer at the kitchen table after dinner, listening to a story we have already heard three times, making peace before going to bed, calling someone before the funeral makes the call too late.
Perhaps that is the miracle we need. Not necessarily fifteen more years, but a new way of seeing the years already given to us. Hezekiah asked God for more time. Perhaps today God quietly turns the question around: not "how much time do you have left," but what are you doing with the time you already have?
- Today’s Readings
- Father Boby's inspirational homily was recorded live during Mass at the Father Peyton Center this morning. You can view the Mass (and the Rosary at the 30-minute mark) on the Family Rosary YouTube page.
- To join the Rosary and Mass Livestream, visit the Family Rosary YouTube or Facebook page at 11:30 a.m. Eastern, Monday – Friday. Consider inviting others to join, too! (*If you are not a member of Facebook and a signup window appears, simply select the X at the top of the pop-up message and continue to the livestream.)
