Is God far from us or near at hand? To those who continue to walk in darkness, God will never be found, but to those who choose to abandon wickedness and seek God, he will always be available. This willingness on the part of God to be found by people who did not know him, if only they repent, as well as the vilest of sinners, if only they repent, often causes the people of God to react with confusion. It makes sense to us that God would have saved us, by why them, or why that type of person? Our own self-righteousness if a very dangerous thing, something Jesus spent much time in the Gospel combating, and here in Isaiah 55 it prompts God to say, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways”.
The will of God has often
been misrepresented as something mysterious, even puzzling, when in reality God
has made it clear that we don’t understand his will simply because it is based
upon a love and mercy that goes beyond our ability to accept. The “thoughts” and “ways” of this passage are
not referring to the disappointments of life that happen to the followers of
God, instead it speaks to the effort by God to find as many people as possible
who would be willing to find forgiveness by trusting in him. God’s ways are above ours because he includes
people we’d overlook, and God’s ways are better than our ways because he
includes types of sinners that we somehow think are worse than we were before
the blood of the Lamb washed us clean.
God’s thoughts and ways are not ours, and that’s a good thing; good for
any lost sinner willing to return to our heavenly Father.
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