Higher ways

This is the verse for the mornings when nothing about God’s management of your life makes sense — the prayer answered differently than asked, the door that stayed shut, the timeline that ignores your careful planning. God does not apologise for the confusion. He explains its scale: heavens-over-earth.

Crucially, the context of these verses is mercy. The lines just before are an invitation to the wicked to return and be abundantly pardoned — and then this: my thoughts are not your thoughts. His ways are higher first of all in kindness. Where we would write people off, He pardons. Where we would settle scores, He restores. The gap runs in our favour.

So the verse is not a shrug — “God is confusing, cope.” It is a reassurance: the parts of the plan you cannot read are being written from a higher vantage, by a better author, with more mercy in the ink than you would have used. Trust the height.