Humiliating experiences can be wonderful preludes to spiritual growth. Such experiences often force us to seek and find the glory that comes from God, the glory of man as the son of God. It is man, the idea of God, who cannot be humiliated.
How much we need to preserve the consciousness of our worth as God's expression. Especially we need this dominion when some devastating experience would make us feel humiliated by what we think others are thinking about us. Sometimes those experiences can be something minor, such as being caught totally unprepared when someone unexpectedly visits us. Or embarrassment may tempt us for a deeper reason. Perhaps we've been praying to overcome some visible illness, and we're concerned about how we appear to others. Or the temptation to feel humilliated may come in an especially challenging form, such as having our reputation smeared by some charge of which we are innocent.
Whatever form such experiences take, they give us an opportunity to demonstrate the grandeur of our true, spiritual status as God's own likeness. In a modest way they give us the occasion to echo the master Christian's humble words at the time of his supreme ordeal. The Bible tells us, "These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." John 17:1
