THE TRUE WAY TO DISCOVER MY OWN DEFICIENCY
[p. 133] THE TRUE WAY TO DISCOVER MY OWN DEFICIENCY
It is never useful to dwell on how little I take in, or how little I resemble the truth presented to me. I do not say that this will not come before me, but quite a different effect is produced when I discover my deficiencies from studying the portrait or the person, and when I am looking at the canvas on which I am copying it. In the first case it is the person or portrait that fills my eye, and the more I look at Him, the more I see what has to be acquired, and I am thus occupied with the amount and greatness of what I have to acquire, and not with the littleness of what is in the copy on the canvas. I am studying to be like Him, not inspecting how unlike I am, which is true enough; but this comes out by the deepened sense of the blessedness and beauty of Him, as I dwell on Him, and I am conscious that the beauty is only and singularly in Him, and not in me, though I desire to have it more than ever; but in order to derive more, I turn, not to my acquisition, where I only discover my deficiencies, but to Him from whom I acquire, and always with the sense of how much I have to acquire; but then with this, I have the stream of supply before me. It is just the difference between a man looking into his purse and seeing only a few coins in it, or going into a room full of gold to fill it. While filling it, he knows how empty it was, and as he puts in piece after piece, he feels, ‘I had not this before’; but then he is occupied with the supply which meets his deficiency, and not with the deficiency merely. No amount of occupation with the deficiency will remedy it; but on the other hand, the more I use the means for remedying it, the more conscious I am how much I needed it. There is no use in a man dwelling on his thirst, he never relieves it by doing so; he has a very keen and peculiar sense of his thirst while relieving it: but then it is not the [p. 134] thirst that occupies him, but that which relieves it, and the zest with which he swallows the water impresses on him how much he needed it. If I am studying Jesus, I feel how little I am like Him; but all the time I am drinking in more of Him, and my desire or want is satisfied at the very time that I have the sense of its existence.
Occupation with deficiency does not rectify, but occupation with that which rectifies always deepens the sense of deficiency. If I am studying the Lord’s path on earth with the eye of my soul on Him in glory, that tells me how unlike Him I am; but at the same time, I am filling my empty heart with His grace and His mind, and as I do, I am enriched, while I have the sense of how poor I must have been because I require so much; and this always goes on, for I always find myself empty and small when I am alongside of Him.
May He keep us with our eyes more simply set on Himself.