Unfinished: Believing is Only the Beginning
Verse
“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).
Food for Thought
Perhaps you have heard the expression “We don’t know what we don’t know.” I have used it in a business context for years, and it essentially means that when we face a major new challenge for which our understanding is woefully inadequate, we don’t know enough to fully appreciate what we don’t know. It’s an expression that humbly confesses ignorance in the face of something very big and very complex.
That’s the way I feel about God. The God who created the universe is so big, so powerful, and so far beyond my ability to comprehend, that I don’t know what I don’t know about God. I can no more comprehend God’s ways than my dog Sophie can comprehend my ways.
We will always be tempted to ask the question “Why did God choose to do it that way?” We might ask, for example, why did he make the universe so large, or why does life seem so rare in the known universe? We might ask why he made the sky blue and the grass green. And we might also ask why he chose to allow evil to exist, why he gave us free will, why he chose to reveal himself so slowly over thousands of years instead of all at once.
We always want to know why he chose to do things the way he did. There are an infinite number of scripts he could have written, but for reasons only God understands, he wrote this one. And here’s the point: no matter which script he chose, we would always wonder why he didn’t choose a different one, one that made more sense to us.
The only real answer is that he is God, and we are not. We are a lot like children who keep asking their parents, “Why?” And sometimes parents just have to answer, “Because I said so.” So as you read more about the big story of God, focus less on the why and more on the how—how you fit in to the amazing story of God’s love.
Question for Reflection
Would it be possible to understand everything about who God is and why he operates the way he does? Which mysteries about God do you wrestle with most?
Prayer
Lord, thank you for being infinite and good. I know that I am neither. Please help me to know these facts and to trust you as a result.
Unfinished: Believing is Only the Beginning. Copyright © 2013 by World Vision.