God’s Thoughts

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD." (Isa.55:8).

Sometimes we marvel at the temerity and presumption of those who set themselves up as judges of the Almighty. How little they know of his supreme majesty, perfect in power, in love, in truth and purity, to whom the angels sing continually Holy! Holy! Holy! before whose presence they bend with veiled faces. In the Creator’s estimation all nations are but a drop in a bucket, the small dust of the balance, yet these morsels of animated dust, whose span of life is so short, whose imperfections are so obvious, dare to reproach God with their complaints, to question the ways of God with humanity, with the earth, with the universe, believing that they with their limited knowledge can do as good if not better.

To blame, to cross‑examine, to ignore, to speak with contempt, to profane the holy name of him whom Isaiah saw, "sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple," (6:1) is an all too common practice in this world of man’s making. The earth was made by God but man has made society. God created the earth but man has made the world. If it is so riddled with wrongs and dissatisfactions after centuries of human rule, so far from right that it is termed by the Bible "this present evil world," then God’s ways and human ways are certainly at variance.

God offers life, but man rains death upon the nations and calls on God to bless his efforts. God offers pardon for sin, but man says there is no such thing, only sickness for which he thinks he has the cure. God offers abundance, but humans create shortages that he may make more money. God asks man to be clean and wholesome, but man prefers drink, drugs, and crime, all those filthy abuses of mind and body which pull him down when God would lift him up. The catalogue of differences is long, the subject stubborn, but the pilgrim walks on in faith, knowing that the time advances when the scales will be removed from the blind eyes, the rebellion taken out of hard hearts and God’s ways will prevail with the human race. In that day they will say "this is our God...we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation." (Isa.25:9)

The longing heart looks to God and learns to think his thoughts after him, to walk in his ways, to find that all his paths are pleasantness and peace.

"Blind unbelief is sure to err,
scan his works in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And He will make it plain."

May / June 1981, Bible Study Monthly