Four more metaphorical mechanisms for the shelf in the shed: Hezekiah

When I listen to stories I hear mechanical devices. Can't help it. My grandfather was an engineer.

A tool maker.

I had nothing to do with that — but perhaps he thought like I do.

I hope so. I quite fancy knowing what a tool maker knows.

Not in actual tools, but in the ideas of construction and forces of physics.

Hezekiah is a great example. As a story, I mean.

When I read about Hezekiah, it feels to me like I'm looking on a shelf in someone's shed and discovering at least four new metaphorical mechanisms I hadn't met before.

Metaphors, remember. Not actual metalwork.

I'll show you what I mean.

First, the nuts and bolts of: acting in faith and being misunderstood

Whoever came before him, Hezekiah broke the mould.

Smash.

Hezekiah was a smashing king. God thought so. (2 Kings 18:1-6)

Good King Hezekiah.

So we have a good king who smashes up the old order — the red herrings and fake things that people were calling good but weren't.

But wait.

Let yourself toy with that for a moment.

(Are you applying the picture to the things you think should be smashed?)

(Are they the same things you think I'm thinking of?)

You can imagine it both ways can't you? I can.

I often catch myself saying something that could definitely be picked up by the other side of the house and used against me. Or, worse, seen as evidence that I am speaking from the other side of the house because I've been misinterpreted as echoing their talking points about the things they'd like to smash.

And that little lesson teaches us something, doesn't it?

Hmm. If I try naming it, I might ruin everything. But you see what I'm looking at, don't you?

Hezekiah was doing the right thing. In faith. And in doing it, he faced — surely — being completely misunderstood.

Interesting.

Next to that on the shelf, the hinge of: humbly, being open to hard truth too.

When Hezekiah gets a letter that accuses, threatens and discourages him, immediately he gathers up all the pages and walks them straight into the presence of God.

He doesn't just summarise, or talk off the top of his head.

He's not just pointing to isolated phrases, accounts, or relying on his own description.

The papers are lying there, verbatim. (2 Kings 19:14 )

Whatever font was used, whatever ink or scroll. The exact turns of phrase, including whatever was between the lines, or behind it all.

Hmm.

So that means, whatever has landed there before the Lord is not just the offensive parts, but the whole form, design, and context.

After all, deep down Hezekiah might be feeling on rocky ground. Some of what he reads there might touch a nerve. His enemy might have a good point.

(Enemies are like that. Sometimes they tell too much truth as well as not enough. Gotta love your enemies…)

So he spreads it ALL out there.

And suddenly I'm thinking of Joshua encountering the angel, and asking, "Whose side are you on? Ours? Or theirs?" (Joshua 5:13-15)

And the angel says,

"The Lord's."

Voila. Another excellent metaphorical mechanism to toy with.

The safe place, before the Lord, is the place to lay out even our enemy's account of how bad things are, and let the truth and the falsity, the grey areas, the subtext, the things we can't possibly know, and the things we know but can't say aloud… all of that, be laid out in full.

Trust, like that, feels like home, doesn't it.

Behind the scenes, surrounded by safety.

Where you can turn off the smart speakers and not even Alexa can hear.

Prayer like that.

With fears.

And tears.

And then —— humbly listening to wisdom that issues from an aerial perspective, rather than the rhetoric of this side or that.

Seems like wisdom. Right there. On all sides.

The shelf is slightly splintered. Ouch. blood. Just a scratch, but — A box of drawing pins, and a small cogwheel are sitting together, turning pointedly…

Oh, dear, dear. Hezekiah's not well. And there's so much I could mention in this part of the subplot, but as I'm looking at metaphorical mechanics, there's an actual bodily motion that intrigues me.

He's just heard he's going to die.

oh. So before anything else, he turns.

Turns his face to the wall. (2 Kings 20:1-6)

To pray.

— You know, I can't help thinking I need to come back to this mechanism after we've looked at the fourth.

But how about, instead, I ask you to hold a thought that remains loud and clear, perhaps, even when I don't raise it again.

It's this: the beauty of what God did within Hezekiah when in vulnerability and fear he turned his face away from everything and everyone else to pray. Precious.

After all, Isaiah couldn't save him.

(I mean, he had ISAIAH there. THE ISAIAH!) No. Not even a big name prophet. Hezekiah turns to the wall.

And God hears him.

He gets many extra years.

Wow. Powerful prayer.

But it wasn't the wall, either.

It was — perhaps — the disciplining of his eyes

to look away

and not be looked at either.

Perhaps.

Intimacy. The secret place.

Where else would we go, but You. (Like Peter said.)

Nothing, nowhere, no one compares.

Hold that thought. Put a drawing pin in it.

And just behind that and covered in cobwebs, but that's okay: a quiet cupboard filled with treasures, lying there, all shiny and valuable.

As a result of Hezekiah being such a smashingly good king, with the wisdom to face up to things with God humbly and obediently, it turns out he prospered. Very rich. Very very rich.

He's not afraid to show it off either.

Rookie error.

The king of Babylon turns up, and everything in the temple gets paraded for the visitors. As if he's Solomon and the Queen of Sheba's come round for tea or something.

Guided tour. (2 Kings 20:12-19)

Nothing's held back.

(What's he trying to prove?!)

And this may be a favourite mechanical metaphorical device of mine. Something about questions of intimacy.

Often useful in unlocking questions like: how can a good king like Hezekiah, who is simply showing the world how God has blessed him — holding nothing back — be doing the wrong thing?

When God enriches us quietly behind the scenes with something privately experienced that helps to fuel and ignite our intimacy and security in him, that precious thing is part of a treasury we must not be tempted to trade in. Once it's out there, 'you've had your reward in full.'

Left unsaid, well —