Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“But if you say to me, ‘We rely on the Lord our God,’ is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’?”
NL Daily Devotion for Monday, November 21, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
This is just one line from a long harangue taunting Jerusalem. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has sent his emissary, the Rabshakeh, to Jerusalem, which has been blockaded by the Assyrians. He seems to know all about Hezekiah—that Judah’s king was in an alliance with Egypt, that he had torn down all the pagan altars on the surrounding mountains and returned to the practice of worshipping only in the temple in Jerusalem, that he was faithful to his God—and he uses his knowledge to eat away at Hezekiah’s confidence.
“You can’t rely on Egypt—they’ll just as soon stab you in the back as help you. You can’t rely on God—you just tore down all the places your people worshiped God. I’ll bet you two thousand horses you don’t even have enough people to ride them into battle.” Just nasty trash-talking. And it scared everyone.
Sometimes I have tapes playing in my head—old tapes that spew taunts like the Rabshakeh’s in order to undermine my sense of equilibrium. They know all my weak spots, because, of course, they are my own brain. The voice on the tapes tells me I’m incompetent, I’m mean, I’m never going to get what I want out of life, I’m a fraud, I should just give up whatever aspirations I’m holding onto at any given moment. Nasty trash-talking.
Hezekiah has Isaiah to reassure him, as we’ll see in the next few days of this story. I have prophets in my own life to reassure me—close friends and confidants who know what’s on those old tapes almost as well as I do, now, and can refute them point for point, helping me see a path to spiritual growth rather than letting the taunting paralyze me. Words are powerful and can be wielded as weapons, whether by a literal bully or our own minds. Words can also be deliverers of peace and reassurance, and I am grateful for those who use them as such.
Who are the prophets in my life who help redirect me from the taunts in my own mind?
