Affliction as related to life.
I. Take first the conception of life as a whole, and see how that is modified or altered by experiences like those through which Hezekiah passed. They who have had no such critical experiences in any form have never fully awakened to the difference which there is between mere existence and life. In how many instances has a serious illness, or a terrible business humiliation, or a trying domestic bereavement when the world seemed going from beneath him, and he was left alone, in the blank and solitude of things, to face eternity and God, brought a man to revise his theory of life! He has rectified the per spective of his existence, and has been led to value the now for its bearing on the hereafter; the present for its motherhood of the future.
II. But passing now to the quality of the life, we may see how that also is affected by such experiences of affliction. Such experiences develop (1) the element of strength, whether in its passive exercise as patient endurance, or in its active manifestation as persevering energy. Afflictions are to the soul what the tempering is to the iron, giving it the toughness of steel, and the endurance too, and if that be so we may surely say regarding them, "By these things men live." (2) Unselfishness. When a man has been in the very grip of the last enemy, and has recovered, or has been within a little of losing all he had, and has escaped, you can understand how such an experience sends him out of himself. It intensifies for him the idea of life as a stewardship for God, and he sees the folly of making all the streams of his effort run into himself. Affliction of some sort seems to be requisite for the production in us of thoughtfulness for others. (3) Sympathy is born out of such experiences as those of Hezekiah. He who has passed through trial can feel most tenderly for those who are similarly afflicted. (4) Experiences like Hezekiah's have much to do with the usefulness of a man's life. Usefulness is not a thing which one can command at will. It is, in most cases, the result of a discipline, and is possessed by those who in a large degree are unconscious that they are exercising it. It depends fully more on what a man is than on what he does; or if it is due to what he does or says, that again is owing very much to what he is; and what he is now has been determined by the history through which he has been brought.
W. M. Taylor, Contrary Winds,p. 136.
References: Isaiah 38:17. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi,p. 231; Ibid., Sermons,vol. vi., No. 316, vol. xix., No. 1110, vol. xxiii., No. 1337.