DROOPING EYE-LIDS
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"My eyes fail with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me" Isaiah 38:14
Hezekiah had been very sick when he wrote the psalm, or ode, from which these words are taken. A long and painful illness had brought him to "the gates of the grave," and he here expresses, in pathetic language, some of the groans, and sighs, and cries, which were wrung from his heart during the time when he feared that he might be deprived of the remainder of his years.
"My eyes fail with looking upward." Upon first reading these words, my heart felt envious of the poor sick king's experience. What! To look up to God so constantly and continually, that my eyes should be wearied with the upward glance? This surely would be a pleasant pain, a sweet sorrow, a most rare and blessed spiritual attainment. With me it is, alas! so different; my eyes mostly fail with looking inward! The fountain of sin within seems ever rising from the depths of my nature, and overflowing the banks of my life, and my gaze is too often riveted on the dark flood, instead of being lifted to Him who has cast all my sins behind His back.
But I look again carefully at the text, and find that it should read thus, "My eyes fail upward." The two words "with looking" are interpolated, they are not in the original Hebrew. The meaning is, literally, "My eye-lids droop, my eyes are too weak to look upward." Ah! now I can understand, and Hezekiah's words touch my very soul. It is as if he said, (what I have so often had to say,) "I am utter weakness, Lord; a weight of sin, and sorrow, and sickness oppresses me; I am brought so low that I cannot even lift up my eyes unto You. But come, sit by my bed, close to me, Lord, so that I need not look up, but can shut my weary eyes for very bliss that You are looking down in tenderest pity on me, and saying, "Fear not — for I am with you."
"Undertake for me." Oh, the blessed restfulness of putting everything — physical, mental, and spiritual — into my Father's hands, and just leaving all there! When once faith can heartily make this transfer, all is well with the soul, and its peace is perfect.
God does nothing by halves; if He undertakes our case, then . . .
He will deliver us from all evil;
He will blot out our transgressions for His own Name's sake;
He will sanctify our affliction to His glory;
He will turn our sorrow into joy.
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