Abundantly Pardon

Has anyone ever used this verse to end a question you were asking? It usually comes from a kind person in a hard week: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways." Said that way, it sounds like a door closing. There is a purpose in your trouble, you will never understand it, and you should stop asking.

Now read the two verses just before it. "Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near." Then: "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Straight after that comes our verse, and it begins with the word "For." That small word ties the two together. The higher thought God is talking about has just been named, and it is His pardon.

Nobody needed to be told that God's mind is beyond us in general. What truly goes beyond us is how wide His welcome is for someone who turns back after a long time going the wrong way. We would take that person back on conditions, and keep a record of what they did. God says He will "abundantly pardon." Then Isaiah goes straight on to the weather. Rain and snow come down from the sky and do not go back up until they have watered the ground and made it give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void."

So in this passage, God's higher ways mean that He goes further in mercy than you would ever go, in the very direction you least expected. What stands high over you here is His mercy, and it covers you the way the sky covers a field, sending down rain until something grows.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 291 is Mighty Spiritual Weapons (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two