King Azariah, better known by the name King Uzziah (II Kings 15:32, 34; II Chronicles 26:1, Isaiah 6:1), started his reign well. When he became king as a young man of 16, he set himself to do “what was right in the sight of the Lord” (II Kings 15:3).

Alas, he did not follow that path consistently to the end of his 52-year reign. He did nothing to take away the hilltop shrines to Baal and Asherah, and so people continued to offer idolatrous worship to other gods in these places (15:4). II Chronicles tells us that “When he had become strong he grew proud, to his destruction” (26:16). It goes on to recount that Uzziah’s sin was in choosing to offer incense himself, instead of recognizing that this office was restricted to the priests who were descendants of Aaron (II Chronicles 26:16-20).

Thus a certain amount of social laxness – pluralism or tolerance, we would call it today – and a certain amount of pride in making worship happen the way he wanted, rather than following the rules: these seem like fairly minor sins. Most of the time God lets us slide, with this level of disobedience. But not this time. “The Lord struck the king, so that he was leprous to the day of his death (II Kings 15:5).

Many of us start well, sincerely dedicating ourselves to following God’s will; then after a while we decide that we want to do things our own way. Often the drift is gradual, and we don’t recognize that we have changed our attitude by small degrees so that we are now the ones in charge, instead of our Lord. Then, when God shrugs and lets unhappy consequences come to us, we feel offended.

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There is a way you want to do things, O Lord: but in our pride we figure it is just fine for us to do things however we want, and we expect you should be happy to go along with us on that. That doesn’t work too well, as we have learned. Change our hearts, we pray, and teach us to do what you say just because you are the one who says it.

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