Vanity

Vanity

Man’s content is pure vanity. Sin has put so many holes into the “tub” that its content has run out. The “tub” becomes whole again only after a person has been crucified with Christ, so it can hold water. Most preachers are also empty. When they speak about God, it is not spirit and life but the letter—concepts and human feelings. In their daily lives it is the world that fills their hearts, thoughts, minds, and mouths. It is altogether vanity.

I recently traveled together with two preachers in the same train compartment. Their entire conversation and joy, their lively interest concerned—without stopping and without a pause—mahogany furniture and furniture decorated with floral motifs, where they could be displayed to best advantage and where they would not be displayed to best advantage, whether in the country, in the city, or in museums. They talked about earning money and saving money, and whether it was more advantageous to live in one place or another, about holiday resorts, swimming, and nice company, about beautiful nature in various places, about automobile trips and hiking tours, about illegal driving, about traffic laws and ordinances, about changes that should be made or should not be made, about the use of language and dialects, about the curious origins of various place names and their meaning, about narrow gauge and wide gauge railroads, about public transportation, about how far a wooden cross was placed inside or outside the church walls in former days, that undoubtedly one idea was more probable for one thing rather than for another, etc., etc.

It wasn’t just that they spoke about such things (for a spiritual man can also speak about earthly things), but it was the manner in which they spoke about it. Here they were without a doubt in their natural element while God’s Word and laws were assuredly ever so foreign to them.

It is best to put off empty talk, for it will soon drain the power and the energy that may be found in one’s heart. It is a “little” fox that destroys things of great value.