PRIDE KILLS LOVE

“O Lord, remember how faithfully and wholeheartedly I conducted myself in Your presence, doing what was pleasing to You!” –Isaiah 38:3

The Lord loved King Hezekiah. When Hezekiah became terminally ill at the age of 39, the Lord healed him and gave him fifteen more years of life (Is 38:5). The Lord even made the sun go backward as a sign of Hezekiah’s healing (Is 38:7-8).

King Hezekiah loved the Lord. He conducted himself faithfully and wholeheartedly in the Lord’s presence (Is 38:3). “He put his trust in the Lord, the God of Israel; and neither before him nor after him was there anyone like him among all the kings of Judah” (2 Kgs 18:5).

Then Hezekiah became proud (2 Chr 32:25). His house was no longer in order (see Is 38:1). He became deathly sick, was miraculously healed, and didn’t even thank the Lord for healing him (2 Chr 32:25). Three years after his healing, he fathered a son, Manasseh, and possibly failed in parenting this child, for the son grew up to do “greater evil than all that was done by the Amorites before him” (2 Kgs 21:11).

The great King Hezekiah left a tarnished legacy after such a glorious start to his reign. He fell away from the Lord because of the sin of pride. Pride ruined Hezekiah’s love. Resist temptations to pride. Don’t lose your love.

PRAYER: Father, I choose love instead of pride.
PROMISE: “Those live whom the Lord protects; Yours…the life of my spirit. You have given me health and life.” –Is 38:16
PRAISE: St. Bonaventure was a Doctor of the Church, a Cardinal, a prolific spiritual writer, a leader in the Franciscan order, and a lifelong minister of reconciliation.