Deep calls to deep
I have been transfixed by one sentence this week:
“The Spirit searches the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).
In my lifetime, our culture has retreated to the shallows – the very words Instagram and snapchat summarise the quick fix satisfaction that we are being hardwired to want.
Our God is not shallow and he did not create us to be shallow. Plants don’t flourish in shallow soil – they wither when the heat turns up (Matthew 13) and so do shallow Christians. We are made for the depths.
But it’s not just about enduring trouble – our loving God wants us to be known by us in the depths of who he is - grace deeper than our sin, love deeper than death, the depths of his wisdom revealed in Christ – his glory!
Our deep God wants us to be deep people – in whom every crack and crevice in our lives is filled with his Spirit.
After my recent surgery, I noticed that healing begins on the surface but must go deeper. Deep down, tendons and muscles must knit together before they can bear weight. It didn’t take long for the pain to disappear when I was doing nothing, but if I stretched too far or got bumped, it was sore. It reminded me of how after losing Trevor, eventually I began to feel as if life could resume again - I felt OK, except when I was in stretching circumstances or was knocked. Deep healing takes time, exercise and rest. It’s not quick or shallow.
As you read this, where might you need a deep touch of God? We all have some areas of deep-down brokenness – here is an invitation to welcome God’s Spirit to search out the depths of his love and grace that brings healing to the deep places of us.
I once went caving and found it terrifying – our own depths are even scarier. But if God’s Spirit can search the depths of God, God’s Spirit can easily search the depths of me, even the parts of me that I can’t understand, where I can’t heal myself (Psalm 139).
As we ask the Spirit to search the depths of God and reveal them to us, the God of the depths meets us in the depths of who we are.
“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls”
(Psalm 42:7).
With thanks to Miroslav Skopek on Unsplash for the picture.
