The Humiliation of Misery

           Have you ever been arrested? Not just given a ticket on the side of the freeway, but actually apprehended, cuffed, stuffed into the back of a squad car, hauled into a police station, and then photographed and fingerprinted? How would you feel if the police came for you while you were in church, taking you by both arms and escorting you down the aisle toward the exit, while everyone gaped and stared at you? It would that be just a little humiliating, right?  Even if you knew you had committed no crime, think of the conversations in homes and restaurants after church that Sunday; my, the rumors and the nodding of heads. I always kind of wondered about him..... Something about her seemed just a little odd to me. Well you never know, do you?

            Do you think being falsely accursed and arrested was any less humiliating for Paul and Silas?  The Bible says they were to be "stripped and beaten and severely flogged." I wouldn't want any part of any such thing. Stripped in front of the crowd?  Talk about being mortified!  Then severely flogged? Having people watch while the skin is flayed off your back... for the sick pleasure of a sadistic mob?  Then, they were thrown into prison-in a dark, putrid inner cell-and forced into an agonizing position in wooden stocks.

            Who would volunteer for that kind of horror? Who would sign up for humiliation, injustice, and slashing and pain? Wouldn't it have been immeasurably better if the city officials had greeted their message with a yawn and a shrug of the shoulders, allowing the missionaries to establish a new base in the province?

            Well, yes. Of course it would have. But then...the other prisoners in that deep dungeon would have never wondered at all the heartfelt praise rising to God from two men who had been beaten within an inch of their lives. And the jailer and his family would have died in their sins. And God would have never supernaturally opened the prison doors with an earthquake-a divine intervention so powerful that the aftershocks of that earthquake have rumbled on for two millennia. 

            The fact is the lower God takes you, the higher His purposes for you may very well be.  The greater the humiliation, the more wonderful the honor He may have in mind.  The more lowly your estate, the more exalted may be His plan.  It's the pattern that Christ Himself left you -- For He humbled Himself and became obedient even unto the death on the cross.  Therefore God exalted Him.  Did you get that?  Friend, don't despise the humiliation or embarrassment, don't scorn the shame or even the pain... because there's a flip side to every coin in God's economy; and like Paul and Silas, God will intervene and He will do something so great, so grand and glorious that it may very well send aftershocks among your family, friends and neighbors for years to come.  It's what happens when you have been humbled!

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