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 ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9, NRSV
What were you thinking? Sometimes that’s a rhetorical question that works to admonish you for a poor choice or for only giving something a minimal effort. Sometimes it’s the way you review your own actions and thoughts as you try to piece together the reasons you made a decision you now question. You imagine you must have had the best intentions, the right motives.
Whatever you were thinking, it is helpful to remember that your thoughts can mislead you and take you places you never meant to go. Your thoughts can be deceivers when you’re already feeling low, and somewhat suspect even in your best moments. The problem with human thinking is that it is fickle, and it doesn’t always recognize its own motivations. Humans rarely strive for higher thoughts or more positive ways of viewing life. We get caught behind the proverbial gray clouds and never see the blue-sky possibility just above us. We don’t even imagine there could be a silver lining. So, how about looking up?
You do your best work when you step away from the noises in your head or the opinions of those around you and check in with your Creator. His thoughts are lofty. His thoughts may surprise you. He thinks very differently than you do, and He knows exactly what your next move should be. If His ways are higher than your ways, and His thoughts are higher than your thoughts, then doesn’t it stand to reason that the best thing you can do is to go to Him, in fact, run to Him, and ask His advice? His counsel, His plan for you, may change your whole direction and push the gray clouds out of view.
God has one goal for you. He wants you to know His thoughts about you. He wants you to know He is there for you and that He has great plans for the rest of your ride on this planet. If low-flying clouds are obstructing your view, making it hard for you to even imagine where you should go from here, then look again. If you cannot see the silver lining, the good meant just for you, then be still. Be still in the presence of God and do not move until you have a sense of His thoughts and His direction. Take heart and listen!
Push through the clouds. Think bigger! Think better! There are blue skies up ahead!