You Can't Fit God in a Box

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways."  Isaiah 55:8

When trials are brought upon us in life, so often there is a natural, burning desire to know why.  Why me?  Why this?  Why now?

I have been guilty of this type of questioning on many occasions.  After Alysa passed away, I was plagued with questions of "Why?"  Most recently, a friend called with devastating news, and I found myself, in an attempt to consol my friend, trying to explain away her circumstance.  "Maybe it was because..."

Isaiah 55:8 reads, "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine" (NLT).  When I seek to answer "why" questions, I end up conforming God, limiting God to my way of thinking.  The audacity of me, to think that I could possibly even come close to understanding why God allows certain things to occur in His world!  I praise God that He does NOT think like me!!  As my children have come home from Sunday School chanting, "You can't fit God in a box!"

A wise soul once suggested to me, rather than asking "Why?" ask "What?"  What does God want to do through your circumstance?  God's number one desire is for us to know Him intimately.  So for starters, realize that God wants to reveal something about Himself to you.  The Creator of the universe wants you to know more about Him.  I would never have come to know God as the great Comforter had I not experienced a situation in which only He could comfort me. 

Lord, I pray that you will forgive me for trying to fit You inside a box.  Sweet friend, you know who you are.  I do not pretend to know why some things happen.  But you and I both know this...

"In all things God works for the good of those who love him" (Romans 8:28).  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5).  You can "Come to Him, all you who are weary and burdened, and He will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).  "Call to Him and He will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3).  And last but certainly not least, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Corinthians 2:9).