2 Chronicles 26:5b, 16
… as long as he sought the LORD, God made him prosper… But after he had become strong, he became arrogant to his own destruction and acted treacherously with the LORD, his God.
Uzziah’s story started off great. He listened to God, he obeyed God, he followed the righteous path. Then it seems his humanness took over. He became strong, made a name for himself. If they had social media, I’m sure they would have “followed” him. All of this went to his head, and he became haughty. His ego became too much for him to remember who he was supposed to be, because I’m sure all he could think about was how much bigger he could be. He had forgotten God’s rules and laws. He even thought so highly of himself, he thought he could go in the temple to make his own offering to the Lord (we know it was a job for the priests). And how did that go?? He got leprosy. While he was right in front of the priests, getting angry (basically throwing a temper tantrum because he couldn’t get what he wanted), God showed him not to mess around. My mom always said, “God doesn’t have to come down with a big stick.”
We are all human. We all have times when our flesh, our desires, our wants can try to lead us astray. It is a fault we earned through original sin. Though we may be baptized and cleansed of original sin, it doesn’t stop us or prevent us from evil creeping in to trick us into believing false things. When we allow pride in any shape or form to win in our hearts, we allow ourselves to be consumed by the world. Once we start down that path, it is an uphill sticky slope to get out. It’s not impossible, but it will not be easy. The best thing to do is to not get caught up with our own prides. Proverbs 11:2 says, ‘when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.’
Pride is self-affirmation. Recognizing the existence and value of one’s individual self. The thing is, we are only here because of God. Our individual self belongs to God. All of our unique characteristics, our quirkiness, our laugh, our skin color and freckles, our eye color, our gifts were all given to us by God. God made us each unique to work together for the greater good. He gave us strengths and weaknesses so we can learn to use them with each other and build his kingdom stronger. But somehow, because of sin, lust, greed, desires of the flesh, etc. started slipping into our minds. We wanted to have more than what he gave us, we wanted to look better than what we were given. We see others and want what they had instead of being satisfied with what we have. We wanted to be heard. We wanted to be different. We didn’t like the rules. We didn’t like our paths. Me, me, me. Mine, mine, mine. Now, now, now.
We have forgotten the only One that our self should matter to. The One that we should be trying to build our lives for. The One who loves us regardless of our quirks. He gave us this life to use for a while. Like checking a book out in the library. What is your book going to look when you return it?
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