My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts

One of the collects uses the verse from Isaiah 55 ("'My thoughts are not Your thoughts, nor are My ways your ways,' declares the Lord") as if God has His way of doing things, and He's just so big and so great that we cannot understand it. So if there's a hurricane that destroys a city, we pray that, y'know, His thoughts aren't our thoughts, and we don't know what's up with the whole disaster thing, but God must know what He's doing.

And that's not untrue.

But Pastor keeps telling us that "My thoughts are not your thoughts" has nothing to do with God being "beyond us" in smarts (which He is), or about His being capricious (which He's not). It is, rather, about His way of looking at things being so different from ours. We believe people ought to pay for their mistakes. We love the people who are nice to us. We get fed up with those who abuse us and either take our revenge or (if we're the [ahem] patient and nonvengeful sort) at least we know to avoid those stinkers who give us grief.

God is not like that!

God's thoughts are not our thoughts. If you look at the context of that verse, it's so obvious. God calls out at the beginning of the chapter, "Come, all you thirsty ones, and get something to drink. All you hungry people, come and get food without paying for it!" A grocery store sure ain't gonna stay in business if that's how they operate! Later in the chapter, He sends out His word to bring people to Himself, and He promises that it will not fail in the job He sends it to do: work repentance and bestow pardon.

His thoughts and His ways are just plain weird.

Can there really truly be that much abundance of mercy?