“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
On October 24, 2014, Alan Eustace stepped out from his gravity defying balloon-held shuttle and began his record breaking fall. From 135,889 feet Eustace’s descent lasted 4 minutes and 27 seconds and reached a speed of 822mph, shattering all previous records of a man free-falling to the earth. And the entire event was carefully recorded, and what a video it is to behold. To see a man simply step out into the void of space and fall prey to gravity, freefalling some 25 and a half miles down, elicits many emotions. Fear, trepidation, exhilaration, terror. But what was mostly declared, what was most on display…was distance. What a great difference we saw from what the world looks like 25 miles up…to what lies under our feet at this very moment. A great chasm of space and distcance that creates a physical barrier. Yet as we peruse through Isaiah chapter 55, we find a verse that challenges us to not just look at a chasm of physical distance, but in the great distance that lies between the thoughts of the creator and the created.
This problem was famously addressed only the 61 verses into the Bible, the fact that the first man and woman wanted to think just like God. As Eve reached high into that tree of knowledge to pluck out that shiny fruit that promised so much, the serpent’s words must have been ringing repeatedly in her ears…“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The ability to know it all, to see it all, and to understand it all. The idea that the thoughts generated between our ears are the best, the brightest, and the most genius around. Yet for all the credit we give ourselves for our deep thinking, the Lord sees it much differently. God did not create 7 billion little thought gods to walk the earth in 2022. He did not give each of those 7 billion people the ability to reason just as Himself. You see, there exists a great distance in the thought capacity between us and our Maker. A great thought chasm that sadly, at times, is reduced from the great infinity it is, to mere inches as we walk and take great pride in our human thinking. But no matter how great we credit our mental acuity, it will never be able to even come close to comprehending the infinite distance it truly lies from the Lord’s. And folks, the quicker we can rest well with this fact, the fact that God’s thoughts are stratospherically higher than our own, the happier and more content we will be in this life.
How do you see your thoughts versus God’s today? Are you capable of making all the right decisions in the right moments completely on your own? Are you reaching for that fruit throughout your day as you attempt to decipher the riddle of your own life using your own limited cerebral capacity? Or are you simply and humbly kneeling at the throne of the Lord throughout your day as you seek His perfect plan in place of your own? You see, it’s a fact, there is a great thought chasm that exists between the Lord’s thinking and our own. He has ways that encompass an even greater distance than Eustace’s historic 25 mile free fall. He has a plan for your life, a plan that is at times, possibly not at all what you would have imagined or even perceived. Yet it was formed in the distant heavens in a Godly thought process that is thoroughly out of human reach. And even though we cannot ever fully comprehend the Lord’s ways and thinking, He gave us a tool to help us bridge the great thought chasm…faith. Praise God for the gift of His Holy Spirit, a Holy Helper that allows us to not question the Lord’s higher thinking, but simply embrace it, knowing that His ways are the best for those that commit to fully follow Jesus Christ.
Today, in great faith, admit that the Lord’s thinking is an endlessly wide chasm that your gray matter simply cannot traverse. Yet in great faith, in the absolute heart knowledge that the Lord is in total control of your life and your eternity, step out in faithful comfort and confidence. For you don’t need to understand it all, you simply need to rest in the love of God…a love that traverses all.
“For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind and declares to man what are His thoughts, He who makes dawn into darkness and treads on the high places of the earth, the Lord God of hosts is His name.” Amos 4:13
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