I have never heard a sermon preached on it. I’ve never taken a Bjble study built around the subject. Yet with age and experience, I am realizing that our perspective is a crucial factor in both our thoughts and our actions.

Perspective is generally defined as “a particular attitude or way of regarding something.” And that attitude can, of course, be good, bad or indifferent. Scripture is full of examples of all three as well as the results that follow. But in Isaiah we learn about the only perspective that is the foundational truth of life.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” says 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).

We are creatures limited by time and space, reason and emotion. We often attempt to use what we know to help us understand the unknown. (And sometimes this works because a lot things really do taste like chicken.)

But God isn’t just a bigger and better version of us. He resides in a different dimension where our reason and emotion absolutely fail. For most of us, “God is good” describes favorable circumstances and the One we credit for bringing them about. 

From God’s eternal viewpoint, “good” is the outcomes that brings glory to Him and fits in with His eternal plan. How we perceive circumstances is woefully short-sighted compared to reality—how God knows them to be. Our finite faculties are the teacup that vainly attempts to hold the ocean of God.

For some of us, our first perspective on the world that is shaped in childhood will become the default viewpoint for life. For others of us, the Holy Spirit will enter our life and become the inner guide whose leading will gradually transform old ways with new perspectives. 

And in that process and through that process, we find that we are increasingly enabled to trust that part of God that we cannot comprehend and rest in ways that—for now, anyway-- we cannot understand.

So is my word that goes out from my mouth; it will not return empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it  (Isaiah 55:11,12).

Nancy Shirah