The Strangeness of God
"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
Disruptive peace; majestic meekness; unsettling comfort - these phrases don't seem to make sense. But anyone who's had a personal encounter with God understands that these apparent paradoxes come together in Him.
The Dean of the Chapel of Calvin College, wrote, "The faithful evangelical preacher of God ought to say not only that God is great and God is good, but also that God is elusive and God is strange…because spiritual health depends upon it."
It's dangerous to think we know God's mind, God's will, or God's intentions. In fact, to fear God is, in part, to recognize that His ways are not our ways. For certain, He's revealed Himself to us in Jesus, and He revealed Himself in how He moved and worked through the lives and stories recorded in the Bible. But He hasn't revealed Himself exhaustively. He hasn't ceased to work in mysterious ways. And that's why we surrender to Him. He's greater than we can think or imagine and will work in strange ways—ways we can't even think of or imagine.
"I have felt His hand upon me in great trials and submitted to His guidance, and I trust that as He shall further open the way, I will be ready to walk therein, relying on His help and trusting in His goodness and wisdom. " Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
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Taken from The Life Recovery Devotional: Thirty Meditations from Scripture for Each Step in Recovery by Stephen Arterburn and David Stoop. Copyright © 1991 by Stephen Arterburn and David Stoop. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
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