Sometimes that fact brings relief – when I am harsh with myself for a miscalculation and He reminds me that He has extended mercy. Sometimes it brings frustration because I persist in my assumption that my perspective is correct, and expend too much energy trying to prove my point even as reality and wisdom push back in an effort to persuade me otherwise.

Isaiah 55 presents a vivid portrayal of what God is like. There is peace to be found in what God is like.

A few days ago I was reading a lengthy comment in a Christian blog by a reader who could not believe that a supposed God of love should expect people to love Him and honor Him when He didn’t fix every difficult situation in their lives, and prevent every unpleasant or tragic situation. Of course, it wasn’t expressed quite that way but that was the essence of it.

Beginning from a perspective of querulous discontent with the Almighty and developing a list of complaints can produce considerable heat but not much light.

It’s a fact that revelation is the manner in which we may become acquainted with what God is like. God is a self-revealing God. The hungry and wounded soul is invited to draw in and will find provision if they lay down their offended human reasoning as they approach.

In the preface of A. W. Tozer’s classic The Knowledge of the Holy, he writes:

The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence….

This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the the forces of religion are making dramatic gains [the book was published in 1961] …. (B)ut the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field.

I’m grateful for the ever-present invitation:

Ho! Everyone who thirsts! Come to the waters; and you who have no money, come! Buy andeat. Yes, come! Buy wine and milk without money and without price….Listen diligently to Me and me and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live.

Isaiah 55:1-3