Shallow and Profound

5 days into the examination season that kicked off with the first papers last Friday and 2 papers down for me later, I stumbled across this reading today from my daily devotional that reminded me not to get too caught up with the mundane things.

Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow 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 shallow, but your wish to impress other people with the fact that you are not shallow, which is a sure sign that you are a spiritual prig.

- November 22nd, My Utmost for His Highness

My mind was racing. I got reminded of the time when Little Ben clammed up after I had exerted my "depth" when he came to talk to me about some relationship matters.

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 shallow than you are. Beware of posing as a profound person; God beame a Baby.

I was stunned. I got reminded of how I always whine about my CAP score not being good enough for me when it is actually higher than many of the people I subject my whining to.

I got reminded of how some people may have actually stopped talking to me because I have become kind of a spiritual nemesis to them, because every time I see them, I talk about nothing but about their walk with God with them - for the lack of a more suitable topic that came to mind.

To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps: the ocean has a shore. The shallow 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."

I got reminded not to hide the small things from God. All the small things that have combined to become the big thing that is haunting me now.

Our safeguard is in the shallow 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 shallow 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 shallow concerns of life.

I pondered on the eternal question I could never answer - why give up eternity for the fleeting? why do I really need to keep chasing after that elusive score?

And I have taken everything to everyone, except God.

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.

It was a stunning rebuke that pierced into the very being of my soul on a Tuesday afternoon where the cool rainy weather helped made sleeping so very nice that I only woke up at 12 noon.

I keep hearing me saying "I need this, I need that" and not going back to Him. It really didn't used to be all like this.