When Isaiah the prophet gave voice to God’s words, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my way higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:8-9) he was giving voice to something we people of faith know all too well: God’s ways are a mystery. We may have heard the story of God’s work of restoring humanity through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus many times, but do we really understand the how? I confess, I don’t. Nevertheless, I believe it.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus’ self-sacrifice was the vehicle by which all sin was/is forgiven, that Jesus’ blood was the perfect sacrifice, thereby replacing all other sacrifices for all time, and then—oh, blessedness!—that Jesus’ return for which we all long will be a day of salvation and not of judgment.
The how of all this, we will never fully understand; the why is perfectly clear: God loves us, every one of us. And our response is also clear: as God loves us, so we are to love our neighbour.
Loving God, give me a heart that loves as you love. Amen. —