I have heard your prayers and seen your tears. I will heal you and add fifteen more years to your life. How we wish that sometimes what we read in the Scriptures would be repeated in our own lives! How we wish that, just as it happened to the individuals about whom we read in the biblical accounts, we would get instant answers to our prayers. In today’s First Reading, we hear about the healing of King Hezekiah by the Lord. Having fallen mortally ill, the Lord, perhaps as a good “gesture” to the King, sent Isaiah the prophet to tell the King that his time had come and so he needed to prepare himself for death. It was not the news that the King wanted to hear from the man of God. In desperation, the King immersed himself in prayer as he implored the Lord to spare his life. The Lord did hear his pleas, and dispatched the prophet to inform him of the good news. In addition to healing him and adding fifteen years to the King’s life, the Lord was also going to help the king fight and win his battles. It was the best news that the King needed to hear.
Hezekiah’s story is a reminder to us of what the Scriptures is about. The Scriptures is a story of God intervening in the lives of his people in order to heal and win for them their fights. The Scriptures is a story of God affording his people second chances. If we were to have an honest conversation with ourselves, we too would realize that our lives are replete with instances of second chances. While our stories might not be as dramatic as those which we find in the Scriptures, they are stories of second chances nonetheless. There are those of us who have been healed of illness that were diagnosed as terminal; there are those of us whose lives have attained peace in their lives and gotten reconciled to members of their families whom they thought were lost forever in their lives; there are those of us who have managed to stay afloat despite being assailed by challenges one after another. 
When the Lord gave Hezekiah a second chance, the Lord did not put before Hezekiah conditions that he needed to fulfill. Instead, it was the Lord himself who promised  goodies to Hezekiah. The Lord doesn’t give us second chances so that we can do something for the Lord. Rather, the second chances are given us so that the Lord’s glory can be manifested in our lives. The second chances are given us so that our lives can become stories that will inspire others. May the many second chances that we have been afforded by the Lord be opportunities for us to witness to God’s fidelity. May they become an opportunity for us to give glory to the name of the Lord. Amen.