Today's devotional ended almost completely underlined or bracketed. It would almost be easier to copy it directly, but I'll just share the tweetables and reflection.
Today's devotional cautions against forgetting God in the shallow places and taking yourself too seriously.
Notable quoteables:
- Trying to convince others of your depth and judging their level of shallowness is a "sure sign that you are a spiritual prig"
- Shallowness is not a "sign that there are no deeps"
- You must live the "surface common-sense life in a common sense way" so that we are prepared to handle the times of depth.
- My favorite: "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 had a teacher my first year of high school who advocated for small talk (surprising in a Bible teacher/Christian). His argument was, though some view shallow or small talking as pointless endeavors and try to make everything so damned serious, you can't truly get to the depths of a person until you have gained their respect and comfortability in the shallow things of life. To do otherwise would be to build a house on sand.
Not only does this "chicken talk" (as my roommate calls it) show you more about the building blocks of a person, it demonstrates them much about you.
When I was little (and still now. I am little in many ways), one of the most major things that endear me to those older than me are the people who take my wee concerns seriously. The ones who don't belittle me or tell me things like, "You're so young. This relationship/conflict/internal struggle really isn't that big of a deal in the long run." The people I most respected were and are people like my cousin Kristina or my big brother, who always considered my opinions and struggles to be of worth and treated me as an equal.
Donald Miller, in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, cautions people against treating others as though they were finite. No person can know the depths of another; only God can. Therefore, we must treat every person as though we believe they are infinite, that they have untold resources of value to offer the world just by existing.
That's for sure an off-shoot of what O is saying, but I consider them linked.
Along his point, it is easy to forget God in the moment by moment procedures of life. For me, it is often because I feel silly or don't want to burden or annoy him with my...myself really. In so doing, those little moments build until I have run totally off-track from God and, thus, forget him and my common sense in the depths of life.
Takeaways:
- Being "shallow" in conversations does not reflect that the relationship itself is shallow. It leaves room for playfulness and opportunities for growth without the predetermined force of seriousness and "growth."
- Every moment is important to God. Every decision, conversation, and thought either directs you toward or away from Himself.
- No one is too small for your time or consideration.
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