Skip to main content

Above


Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.  Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. “
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. “(Isaiah 55:6-9)

Reading this passage this morning, the first question that comes to mind is whether or not I really believe that God has mercy or freely pardons. I know it’s what Scripture says, and I guess I am depending on it being true, but this morning I woke with a sore back and a bad case of brain fog. I feel like I’ve been stumbling around, and the two prayers that came most readily to my mind were “Please, Lord,” and “Have mercy.” The first issue is that I’m not sure those aren’t flippant prayers on my part. God has had mercy – otherwise I’d probably be dead. Am I praying them as a real request, or am I just whining? I’m leaning toward the latter explanation because it seems to me as if, on mornings like this, I’m turning the key to my mind and the engine grumbles but doesn’t start. The whining is part of an attempt to get my mind functioning and focused. 
The second thing that comes to mind is the parallelism. We have the wicked and their ways, and the unrighteous and their thoughts. We also have God whose thoughts and ways are higher than ours. There is a cycle involved here – our actions stem from our thoughts, and our thoughts stem from our actions. Our unrighteousness produces our wickedness, which produces more unrighteousness. On the other hand, God’s thoughts – which are higher or better than our unrighteous thoughts, produce higher or better actions, which produce higher or better thoughts. 
The difference between our unrighteous thoughts and God’s higher thoughts isn’t a matter of a few millimeters. How much higher are the heavens than the earth? It might be useful to understand this in terms of orders of magnitude rather than arithmetic. The smallest difference between your thoughts and God’s would be that His are ten times as high as yours. If yours are a 1, His aren’t 2, 3, or 4. His area 10, 100, or 1000. When we say we can’t or don’t understand, we’re right.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Think About These Things

                 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Philippians 4:8) This passage is a major challenge for me. Like everyone else, I struggle to keep my thoughts from wandering off into the weeds, then wondering what possible benefits those weeds might have… Sigh. But as a writer, I have to delve at least a little into the ignoble, wrong, impure, unlovely, and debased. After all, there’s no story if everything’s just as it should be and everyone’s happy. As Christians, there are times when we need to deal with all the negatives, but that makes it even more important that we practice turning our minds by force of attention to what is noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. It’s just too easy to get stuck in a swamp. With my...
1 comment
Read more

Higher Thoughts

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the  Lord . “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)           The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,   for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord      so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:15-16) If you read about the ancient gods of the various peoples, you’ll find that they think just like people. In fact, they think just like the sort of people we really wouldn’t want to be around. They think like the most corrupt Hollywood producer or, like hormone overloaded teens with no upbringing.   It’s embarrassing to read. I have a friend who argues that because God is not just like us, He is so vastly dif...
2 comments
Read more

Pure...

            The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (I Timothy 1:5)   I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16) I’m probably cheating - or mishandling the Bible, but earlier I was thinking about love being pure and purifying. And hatred being pure and purifying. And anger…joy…patience… fear… jealousy… courage…lust… and other strongly felt feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. Today’s verse brings purity and love together, so it’s the verse of the day, but it’s not really the focus. That means my motive for sharing it with you probably isn’t pure. As you read through my list, you   probably thought, “Yeah” about some, and “What’s she on?” about others. But consider how much hatred, a...
Post a Comment
Read more