This Far, and No Farther
“ But I know where you stay and when you come and go and how you rage against me ” —2 Kings 19:27, NIV. Nothing more descriptive came to mind as I read this verse in its context that the famous poem by Lord Byron. The King of Assyria assumed that all he was, all he had, everything he was certain he could accomplish, was his to boast about and his to take. In Isaiah’s message from God to a besieged King Hezekiah in Jerusalem, the prophet writes the future of this pagan invader in the sand, draws a line, and says: “This far and no farther.” For those who belong to the Lord and are besieged by any enemy, the message rings down through history: “Do not fear, the Lord will let him go so far and no farther.” There are those forces that seek to shatter the believer, to reduce him, or her, to broken fragments. God only bends his children; he never breaks them, and he will not permit even those forces that he has permitted to be unleashed, to go beyond what he has commanded. Sennacheri...