God's Ways and Ours

In Isaiah 55:8-9, God compares the nature of His thoughts to ours.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (ESV)

In his book, “Be a Circle Maker,” Pastor Mark Batterson discusses the size of the universe--the distance between the heavens and the earth. In one day, light travels 160 billion miles. In one year, light travels 5 trillion, 865 billion, 696 million miles. And yet, even at these incredible speeds, it would take light 15.5 billion years to travel to the edge of our universe.

The size of the universe is difficult to comprehend. And yet God uses the size of the universe as an analogy to how much greater his wisdom and power are in comparison to ours. Not only can I not begin to comprehend the nature and extent of all of God’s ways in our own lives, but I cannot even begin to comprehend how much superior his ways are to mine.

In light of this gap, we have reason for hope. We can trust that, when life circumstances appear to be a nightmare, or when there appears to be no redeeming value to a life failure, that God’s ways are greater than ours, and that he will ultimately redeem our sufferings. Grieving parents can live in the hope that our children did not die because God could not save them or, if he could, that he chose not to because he does not love us. Instead, we can live in the hope that our God, whose ways we cannot hope to completely “trace out,” has ordained our child’s passing for our ultimate good and the good of our children.