day 263: "I Was Mortified"

When someone says they were mortified, it means they were beyond offended and humiliated. They are saying that they were so torn down in front of other people that it feels unrecoverable. They feel like they have lost their self-identity and self-worth and won’t be able to return to a place of power, influence, or even equal standing. It takes a lot for someone to be mortified, but when they are, you hear about it. I once heard a boss tell her subordinate that she was “mortified” when the presentation didn’t go as planned and she was left without her data and facts to complete the presentation. While she did lose some standing with the people she was presenting to and I know she felt mortified, it wasn’t really that bad. I also know that if at that moment, I had leaned over to her and said, “you know, we are supposed to feel mortified all the time”, that she would have thought I had gone off my rocker. But, if you are a believer and follower of Jesus, we are to mortify ourselves regularly. Yes, we are to die to ourselves and ensure that we aren’t letting our egos or any form of ourselves become too important that we don’t turn ourselves, our lives, and our work to God each and every day. JoseMaria Escriva says this about dying to ourselves; “The appropriate word you left unsaid; the joke you didn’t tell; the cheerful smile for those who bother you; that silence when you’re unjustly accused; your kind conversation with people you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in those who live with you…this with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification.” Jesus tells us in John Chapter 12, verse 24 that death must occur for life to happen and the harvest to yield: “The truth is a kernel of wheat must be planted in the soil. Unless it dies it will be alone – a single seed. But its death will produce many new kernels – a plentiful harvest of new lives. If we want to create new lives around us, we must die to ourselves. Today, watch what you do, think, say and feel and see if on the way home you can say with all sincerity and satisfaction; “Today, I was mortified!”

Reference: John 12:24 (New Living Testament)