November 22nd — SHALLOW AND PROFOUND
November 22nd.SHALLOW AND PROFOUND
"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 1 Corinthians 10:31
Beware of al owing yourself to think that the shal ow concerns of life are not ordained of God; they are as much of God as the profound. It is not your devotion to God that makes you refuse to be shal ow, but your wish to impress other people with the fact that you are not shal ow, which is a sure sign that you are a spiritual prig. Be careful of the production of contempt in yourself, it always comes along this line, and causes you to go about as a walking rebuke to other people because they are more shal ow than you are. Beware of posing as a profound person; God became a Baby.
To be shal ow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shal owness a sign that there are no deeps: the ocean has a shore. The shal ow amenities of life, eating and drinking, walking and talking, are al ordained by God. These are the things in which Our Lord lived. He lived in them as the Son of God, and He said that "the disciple is not above his Master."
Our safeguard is in the shal ow things. We have to live the surface common-sense life in a common-sense way; when the deeper things come, God gives them to us apart from the shal ow concerns. Never show the deeps to anyone but God. We are so abominably serious, so desperately interested in our own characters, that we refuse to behave like Christians in the shal ow concerns of life.
Determinedly take no one seriously but God, and the first person you find you have to leave severely alone as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself.