II Chronicles 33:10 The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention. 11 Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon. 12 And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. 13 He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.
If you have done much reading in Kings and Chronicles, the name Manasseh will automatically make you think "evil king!" We are trained to divide the kings into a short list of good kings and long list of bad ones. This one paragraph is often forgotten by us all. After a long life of doing evil, Manasseh did finally humble himself and call out to God. God heard his plea and actually returned him to his throne. The next paragraph tells us of all the good things Manasseh did to show that indeed he did know that the Lord was God. The simple lesson is this: no matter what you've been like and done, you can still call and be heard. It also means we should never in our minds put others beyond the reach of God's ear.
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