So many of the best Sunday School stories are crammed into Daniel; this is one of my favorites. (You can read it here.)  King Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of the Babylonian empire, had an ego problem.  Being the absolute ruler over the Ancient Near East, from the Persian Gulf to the Sinai Peninsula, has a tendency to go to your head.

Imagine how powerful one of these ancient kings was.  Their word was law; their whims were immediately obeyed.  It was nothing for them to order people tortured and killed.  There was no due process, no appeal.  Ancient kings erected statues to themselves which their subjects were required to worship as deities.

Nebuchadnezzar would have to work hard to tame his ego, even if he wanted to.  But he didn’t have any desire to keep his ego on a leash.  He relished the power and praise that came with his position.  He was, as they say, ‘a self-made man who worshipped his creator.’

There’s the rub.

The real Creator warned Nebuchadnezzar in a dream about who was really the Ruler of All, but the king ignored the warning that was delivered by Daniel who interpreted the dream.

The punishment for Nebuchadnezzar’s pride was 7 years in which he lost touch with his reason and lived like a wild beast, eating grass and sleeping under the stars.  At the end of the 7 years, he regained his faculties, and his first act was to praise the God who was higher than any king.

It’s not just kings who need humility.  One of the greatest threats to our spiritual health is our tendency to forget that we are creatures and put ourselves in the place of God.

The Latin root of the word “humility” is humilis, which is also the root word of earth (like “humus”).  From time to time, God reminds us that we are creatures of the earth.  It’s good for us to know our place, to be humble before our Creator just like Nebuchadnezzar (but without eating grass).

Prayer:  Author of Life, you formed me from dust of the earth.  Keep me down to earth.  Amen.