Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "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."
I can fully get that; God's ways are higher than mine, He has a reason for everything that He does. I can read that verse and say yep, I will never understand why God moves the way He moves. Furthermore, I'm thankful for this verse. Thank God that He does things outside of my understanding, cuz how boring if He only operated according to my thoughts.
But then you see this verse in action in the lives of people around you and it causes you to really ponder the truth of what is being said. Really, really.
Yesterday, a woman in our church, one that I've grown to love a great deal over the past few years, went to be with the Lord. She fought cancer - and when I say "fought," I mean it in every sense of the word. This woman is an enigma, to say the least. I've never seen a person walk through such an intense storm in life with the amount of grace and strength as she did. Her joy for God was absolutely contagious. To watch her praise during worship was something out of this world, literally. I can only recall a handful of times she actually missed church during this battle, in fact, she was just there less than a week before she died. This woman was a fighter. She did everything she knew to do to receive a healing from the Lord. She followed the Word of God in every way possible, she did all that we know to do. And yet, she still was taken home without receiving a physical healing, here on this earth anyhow.
Now, of course we believe that she is in the midst of an ultimate healing. We could not bribe her back here if we tried! She is literally seeing with her own eyes the things that we have only been so lucky as to read about. And more than we have read...more than we can imagine...because again, our thoughts can't even begin to go there.
So as my heart is so grieved over this, as I will no longer be able to watch an extraordinary trophy of God's grace dance before Him, I'll not be able to sit and joke with her about the state of her wig or the lack of her make up, or the fact that her husband had the job of once helping her with her make-up, thereby making her look like a clown, or the fact that she was called a little old man in the hospital once, so she decided to wear fancy sparkly hats from there out...I'll greatly miss those things...BUT, I have the hope that I'll see her again.
And as I sat yesterday upon hearing the news, pondering this woman's faith, an unshakeable faith, I asked the question that we all have asked at one point or another, why? Why was she called home to glory? Why was she not healed here on this earth? Because in my mind, wow, imagine the amazement the doctors would have felt if she was healed here. Imagine the glory God would be given.
And then I was quickly reminded of this verse. My thoughts are not His thoughts. What I think would have been a phenomenal chapter for her cannot even match what God's thoughts are on the book of her life. Only God took each step with her, journey after journey. Storm after storm. Victory after victory. Setback after setback. Miracle after miracle.
I can try to reason why God moved in this way, but again, my thoughts are not His thoughts. So even my reasoning isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the reasoning of God.
Why did the Lord take my husband's dear mother home at the young age of 46? In my thoughts, man, imagine the glory that could have come to the Lord had He chose to heal that precious woman completely! My girls would have the joy of knowing her. I would have the honor of having a mother in law. But again, my thoughts are not His thoughts. My ways are not His ways.
So to anyone that might find themselves in a place of "why" today, remember this verse. It won't answer your question, it won't immediately take the sting away from the grief, it may not even bring you that solace you so desire in this particular moment...but if you will allow yourself to fall back into the arms of Jesus, eyes shut, body limp, just fall back. The one that does know the answer will catch you. And one day, in the sweet by and by, you will ask the questions, and He will tell you why.
As the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are His ways higher than ours. That's pretty high. But not too high for Him to catch you. He's just a fall away...
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