Saturday, November 22, 2008

Living for God is So Shallow

This afternoon, while sitting at Panera Bread, my muse was today's entry from Oswald Chamber's Devotional, My Utmost for His Highest.

He mentioned the shallow things of this world and how they pertain to our Christian walk.

This struck a chord of peace in me somehow. So often I find myself refusing to be shallow. I am passive aggressive in small ways regarding this. 

When people mention professional sports I often find a need to establish that I know nothing about it. I almost take a sort of pride in the fact that I do not know about sports; it MUST imply that I have better things to do. (He says sarcastically.)

It is not fully conscious or intentional, but after reading about what Chambers had to say about it I can certainly see this fault in my life.

I see it in other areas, but I emphasize how relieving it was to hear what Chambers had to say. I was relieved because of the fact that sometimes business seems very superficial to me. Working a job, building streams of income, or, like our success website, internet income seems way too shallow. 

Some times I feel that doing these things is a complete distraction from what “God has called me to,” as if to say that God would never have called me to something so “worldly” as work in the business arena for a season.

It was relieving to hear once again that God is in those little things. God is involved even when the schedule changes by superficial things. God is involved when I have to move to a new place (like this weekend) and work back-to-back. 

Like my friend who has traveled the world to speak and now works in a homeless shelter doing data entry (something that could smell of a fall from favor), she knows that God is in that, too.

Shallowness, simplicity, is just as divine as complexity and “being deep” and profound. We must not be pretentious. We must not be arrogant. As expressed by Chambers, even the ocean has a shallow shore. 

And again, we should only express the true depth of lives to God. That is to say, we should not be show profound as to be unapproachable. If our appearance of being shallow is the price of drawing some in to a fellowship with the Body and God, then so be it!

1 comment:

Justin McNeil said...

I love Chambers for this very reason. I read it every day and when I read the entry you are talking about I went through my whole day with a different perspective. Thanks for reminding me of it.