Higher Thoughts: Isaiah 55:8-9
Photo by Vladimir Soares on Unsplash
At a funeral, I experienced a profound moment of clarity to start my year. A husband and wife had died within a month of each other, on the cusp of retirement, and both of them were being remembered at the calling and service I was attending that afternoon.
In the calling line, I greeted the mother of the deceased, who was 90 years old. She was small, frail, usually seated, with eyes as bright as they were when she was 9. She took my hand, patted it, and said, “We don’t teach Him. He doesn’t need my help. This is just how it should be.”
She was burying her daughter. Heartbreaking. She was burying her son-in-law. She was surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren and multiple churches’ worth of people who knew the deceased or their family members, all in surprise and grief. I saw civic leaders, both from the business world and the city building. Though sorrowing with hope in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, we were sorrowing nonetheless. She was the smallest person in the building older than 15. And she was saying, “We don’t teach God. God doesn’t need our help.”
She was teaching me Isaiah 55:8-9: “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).
The difference between the quality of my plans and God’s plans is equivalent to the distance between earth and heaven. Vast. When things do not make sense, I must remember, they do not make sense on earth. They do not make sense to my little human brain. They do make sense, and God certainly doesn’t need my help in unfolding his plans to give out justice and mercy, assignment of his sons and daughters to our earthly tasks, or retirement to the life after life. The cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ confirm to me that belief.
While our tomorrow here on earth is not assured, our eternal tomorrows in heaven are assured through faith in Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins and rose for our forgiveness. Achieving that miracle is the pinnacle of God’s thoughts being higher than ours, and for anyone wondering how to think about death, this dear grandmother and I would like to share our faith, that if you put your hope in Christ, asking for forgiveness of your sins, you too can be saved and adopted by God to life after life. That is a high, high thought.
We don’t teach Him. He doesn’t need my help.