Shortcuts!
by Pastor Peter Bean
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‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord (Isaiah 55:8).
Thank goodness for that!
My brother and I are known rather (in)famously for our shortcuts – the ones where you don’t need a map, which saves time and distance, and where you don’t listen to your wife – and regularly finish up at a dead-end … thus necessitating retracing the route and taking up extra time, distance, and patience! (Possibly, we’re not the only males in history with that story.) For us, it was ‘my way or the byway’. And, invariably, the byway won!
Now, before you laugh at us too much, consider if that’s not a parable about what Isaiah is saying here. How many times in life do all of us determine to take a shortcut? We think we’ve got a handle on things, or we’ll fix that situation our way, only to end up at a dead-end, or in a mess of our own making?
It’s pretty easy to want to go our own way, to think our thoughts are pretty clever, to discard advice, to reject conversation, to neglect prayer. And to end up in a mess.
That’s why I began this devotion with ‘Thank goodness for that’. Or more correctly, ‘Thank God for that’. Thank God that his ways and thoughts are so different and so much higher than mine and yours. Because the simple fact is that not only does God have a better way, a clearer thought, God also does not beat up on us when we mess up. When I end up at a dead-end or when I mess up, I’m not too impressed with my thinking and my way, and sometimes, even often, I berate myself.
I reckon God simply looks down, has a laugh, and says: ‘Yep, Peter, you messed up. But I [God] haven’t. I made you in my image. I love you despite what you do, how you think, the various ways you try to go. Try again. My ways are higher than yours’. There’s that amazing mercy again!
Thank you, God, for your thoughts and your ways – they are so much higher than mine. Let my thoughts and ways constantly be permeated by yours. Amen.
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