Saturday, November 8th, 2003 - King Uzziah

Many of you may not know, so I must start out by saying that 52 has been my favorite number for years... since 6th grade, I believe. My first AIM screen name was DRau52. I have no idea why 52 specifically; knowing my imagination, I would be surprised if there actually was a reason for it back in 6th grade.

In my study of the historical books of the Old Testament, I happened upon King Uzziah in 2 Kings 15:1-7. I'll attempt to give you a little bit of background information. Uzziah was the king in Judah for (you guessed it) 52 years. This was substantially longer than most kings of the day, averaging rougly 15-20 year reigns. Judah was the tribe of the line of King David and eventually Jesus; thus, the kings of Judah were more likely to follow God as their ancestor David did than the kings of Israel. Uzziah was one of the kings of Judah who "did what was pleasing in the Lord's sight."

I was struck by many attributes of Uzziah, starting with the length of his reign. To reign that long and live that old as a king (without someone killing you for your throne) was so rare in all the chapters I have read so far - no one else even comes close. The number being 52 specifically made me laugh because it is my favorite number and such an unusual number to be someone's favorite number.

Also, Uzziah took the throne at the age of sixteen. His father fled from a conspiracy against his life, only to be hunted down by assassins. So instead of learning how to shave and drive a car, he had the weight of ruling a kingdom on his shoulders. Sure, his grandfather started at age seven, so Uzziah was a little better off. But what struck me the most was the fact that I chose to live my life for Christ at age 16 - I started to relate to this Uzziah guy in a metaphorical way.

It was in the year King Uzziah died that Isaiah was called out into his mission (Isaiah 6:1) as a prophet. Not just any prophet, however; Isaiah was the most profound prophet in telling of the coming of the Messiah - Jesus Christ. Thinking of this passage, I started to throw it into my metaphorical mental wanderings. God has shown me in the past that a consistent part of my purpose is to encourage, so I saw this whole situation in the light that maybe I'll encourage someone in my lifetime to go out and proclaim God's truth through a large ministry (a modern day Isaiah, if you will).

Little is said about what King Uzziah actually did; however, he was struck with leprosy (a skin disease) and lived with it for the rest of his life. As a result, he lived in a house by himself. Since I was seeing myself as metaphorically tied to Uzziah, I pondered what my "leprosy" might be and if I may have encountered it yet or not. And would (or did) I respond in a similar way to Uzziah?

By now, you may very well be thinking that I've lost it or that I'm "way out there," and you are probably right. But the way that this all came together was so interesting to me that I had to tell about it. I thought of the leprosy parallel being either as a warning from God about something that may happen to me or as something that already happened to me, maybe even a characteristic that I hold.

A warning sounded like a good idea, but since I wasn't taking this whole thing as seriously as it may sound that I did, I thought more about what it may be in my life right now. Thinking of why I would end up living alone, I considered that my leprosy might be my fear of getting into a relationship (yeah I discovered that recently - I don't know if I ever want to go there, lol), or maybe my leprosy might be me going off as a missionary somewhere and living in a grass hut by myself.

I thought of my leprosy as my inability to get to sleep, at least at "normal" hours. I thought of it as my desire to do God's will in every area of my life yet only giving Him half of me to work with. I thought of it as my tendency to say "good enough" when God has only just started to do what He wants to do in me. I thought of it as potentially a lot of things, actually....

Does any of this analogical/metaphorical mayhem have any value? Didn't I just go off on a long series of tangents starting with a coincidence in numbers? Maybe so. However, I did get me thinking quite a bit.

I just decided that since this post doesn't really have a strong (or any) point, I'll put in a little blip about my weekend. I went to visit my best friend, Cheridyn, and our awesome friend Joe came up, too. Us three have gone to school together for ages, and it was awesome to talk about how God has rocked all of our faces off since we left for college, drawing us all closer to Him at relatively the same time. I hadn't seen either one of them in too long, and I was so overwhelmingly joyous at how I could see Christ working in them and their lives. It was most edifying (did I use it right, Vic? :) ).

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