Life beyond this? In our reading today from Isaiah, Hezekiah, king of Judea, has no high hopes when he’s suddenly told he’s going to die, even as he’s engaged in crucial negotiations for his people with the Assyrians.

His thoughts are placed in the responsorial psalm of today’s liturgy:

“Once I said,
In the noontime of life I must depart!
To the gates of the nether world I shall be consigned
for the rest of my years.” 

I said, “I shall see the LORD no more
in the land of the living.
No longer shall I behold my fellow men
among those who dwell in the world.”

My dwelling, like a shepherd’s tent,
is struck down and borne away from me;
You have folded up my life, like a weaver
who severs the last thread.”

It’s not just death he mourns, as he turns to a dark wall, it’s the time of death, as he’s involved in a crucial work for his people. Death also brings him to a place where he will “see the Lord no more in the land of the living.” His experience of God in this life is taken away, and finally, he will lose those people around him who mean so much. “I shall no longer behold my fellow men among those who dwell in the world.” Life is gone.

“O Lord; I shall not die“. God is the one who gives life, our responsory says. God promises, not just life that stretches out a little while longer, but eternal life. Eternal life is not life that removes us from the work we are engaged in here on earth. It is not life that separates us from those we know and love now. It certainly is not life that takes us away from the presence of God.

You saved my life, O Lord; I shall not die.

In our reading from Isaiah yesterday, the prophet promises more than a dark pit after death. He hears humanity in the voice of Hezekiah crying out in God’s presence like “a woman about to give birth, writhing and crying out in her pains… We conceived and writhed in pain, giving birth to the wind; salvation we have not achieved for the earth, the inhabitants of the world cannot bring it forth.” Our dreams of life are shattered.

Isaiah follows that stark description of human efforts– a woman in labor, giving birth to the wind– with these words:

“But your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise;
awake and sing, you who lie in the dust.
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the land of shades gives birth.” (Isaiah 26, 16-19)

Isaiah is more than a prophet who calls for social justice and a just society. His vision of God inspires him to promise his people life beyond this.

Isaiah 38 is an important reading in the prayers of the church. It’s found in morning prayer, Holy Saturday, in morning prayer of the Office of the Dead, and morning prayer, Tuesday, week 2 of. the Liturgy of the Hours.

We remember the death and resurrection of Jesus today, Friday.