Higher Ways, 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

In the past, I have usually looked to this passage of Scripture for consolation when something didn't work out as I'd hoped or something happened, usually bad, that I didn't understand. But today, reading it for the umpteenth time, I see it in a whole new light and whole new faith.

Today, these words fill me with forward-looking anticipation instead of a backwards-looking, sometimes grim sense that, well, God must have known what he was doing. The old view was about acquiescence in what has passed; the new view is about hope and faith for the future. The old view was about God chiding me for my doubts and regrets, as if to say, "I'm God. Don't you think I know what I'm doing here?"

In the new view, I hear God saying, "Yes, you are facing challenges that are bigger than your ability to figure out, but take heart! I've lifted that burden from your shoulders, for I have solutions that your finite mind can't even conceive, yet they are simple for me. And I delight to employ them on your behalf for your benefit and my glory! I WILL make a way where there seems to be no way. Just trust me." In this scripture, I hear today an extension of that same sense I've had since December that God is not only able, not only willing, but eager to show himself strong on our behalf. It fills me with a childlike sense of excitement like when I was a kid, waiting for Christmas morning to see what wonderful things were under the tree for me.

The promise goes further in verses 10-11 to say that what God speaks cannot fail to accomplish his desire and purpose. You and I can completely rest in that reality. I don't have to lay awake at night trying to figure out what to do about the thorny problems of my life. My job is to lay them before him in faith, obey anything he might tell me to do, and then praise him in grateful, joyful anticipation of the answers. Then verses 12 and 13 will be fulfilled:

"You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord's renown,
for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed."