God Invites us to be "Serious" With Him

A Meditation on the Divine Depth That Calls Us Out of the Shallow and Into the Infinite

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about “The Great Deep”. You don’t know what that is? You must be new here. God is “The Great Deep” and he is ‘one serious cat!’ Let me explain what that means, and why we should all come to a deeper appreciation of it.

The Great Deep! That’s how I think of God. You may have heard me say that a couple of times if you’ve been with me for a while. “Deep calls unto deep” is a phrase from Psalm 42:7 describing a profound spiritual longing for God. It symbolizes the soul’s intense need for God’s presence — a need that can be satisfied only by His infinite fullness. As St. Augustine put it, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You, O God.”

Here’s more of that psalm — and why it reveals more than its words alone might say.

“Deep calling unto deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;
All Your breakers and Your waves have passed over me.
The Lord will send His goodness in the daytime;
And His song will be with me in the night,
A prayer to the God of my life.”

This captures my ongoing struggle to come to know God very deeply; to surrender myself to the draw and pull of The Great Deep (God), as I move closer and closer toward It with greater speed and intensity, ultimately to be swallowed up by It.

A Deep, Serious “Cat”

I see God as a person who is very, very deep. The fullness of everything Good, True, Beautiful and absolutely amazing. Recently in prayer I expressed this to God in about as plain and sincere a way I could:

“My God, you are one serious cat!”

You’re probably thinking, “A serious what?” In the old jazz era of the ’40s through the ’70s, the word “cat” was a cool, colloquial way to refer to a person. But not just any person. He was someone who had something going on, something that made him stand out. The word carried over into the blues scene and into ’70s and ’80s urban culture, which is how it found its way into my own lexicon.

So what do I mean by “serious,” and why do I say God is such a serious cat? When I say “God is very serious,” I mean it as an expression of reverence and wonder. I don’t mean He’s stern or humorless; I mean that everything about Him carries unimaginable depth and gravity. Nothing God does is trivial. Nothing is shallow. Nothing is cheap. He is the fullness of everything good, true, beautiful, and amazing. For me, “serious” is the only fitting word. It connotes greatness, glory, depth.

My prayer continued beyond telling God that He was a serious cat.

“My God, you are serious! Everything about you is serious, Lord!” I said. Then I went on to glorify Him for the specific things that demonstrate how “serious” He is: creation, the capturing of the finite from the Eternal, His plan for the salvation of man, creation itself, the Exodus of the Jews, specific miracles, the Church, the Cross, the Incarnation.

Nothing God does is cheap; it’s all very serious, and it’s all top shelf. He always goes big. It all shows God to be infinitely amazing, and you can’t resist a big, loud “Wow!!!!” when you observe Him through His action, His words, His love, His creation, His work.

‘Deep Calls Not Unto Shallow’

But let’s go back to the psalm for a moment: Deep calls unto deep. It isn’t only God who is deep here (or “serious”); we are also “deep.” We’re a snapshot of God Himself. Smaller, of course, but we bear His image and likeness. We are “a deep,” and He is “The Deep.” He calls to us, and we, hopefully, call to Him, because we belong together—united. We are deep; we are serious, as far as God is concerned… until we aren’t, because of our own choice not to be.

It’s striking to me, when I think about how serious God is, and that he invites us to share in his “seriousness”. We have that capacity to do so, but we have to choose to live that way. It’s sad that so many don’t take themselves as seriously as God takes us because they’re missing out on a fantastic ride that involves both engagement and surrender, discovery and mystery all at the same time.

Every day, all day, God invites us to enter into Himself spiritually, sacramentally, and personally. He invites us to share in His seriousness, in His greatness and depth, to be “serious” with Him. We can’t do it by ourselves; we can’t do it separated from Jesus, His Son and the mediator between God and man. That sharing has to begin with an acknowledgment that we are more than we appear, even to ourselves. We’re deeper, more serious, with greatness as both our origin and destiny. And so we are made for something this world can never satisfy. We are fulfilled and completed only when we unite ourselves to God, in all His greatness, through Jesus Christ, in all His greatness. Start with the seriousness of the Cross, proceed to the Mass, and keep going from there. The Great Deep is calling!

How do you recognize the “seriousness” of God? How do you recognize His greatness, his glory, his awesomeness? What stands out for you?

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