GOD’S WAYS

ARE NOT MY WAYS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my thoughts for today is: God’s Ways Are Not My Ways.

The heart of prayer is for the human being to shut up and listen to the heart of God. It’s as simple as that. And in prayer, we find out what Isaiah found out in prayer. I am not God. God is other and God has ideas and thoughts and loves of his own and they are not the way I think and feel and love and see. In prayer Isaiah heard these words, 

          “My thoughts are not your thoughts,

          nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
          As high as the heavens are above the earth,

          so high are my ways above your ways

          and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

This morning I’d like to reflect briefly on that reality: “God’s Ways Are Not My Ways.”

Or shut up and discover you’re not God.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel gives a concrete example of what Isaiah heard in the principle that God’s Ways Are Not My Ways. It’s the Parable of the Generous Vineyard Owner.

George McCauley said, “If Jesus got killed for any single teaching, the teaching in today’s gospel might have been the one.”

Doesn’t God have the right to do what God wants to do? We cry for that gift for ourselves, yet we often don’t want or don’t allow God to be God. We want God to fit into our image and likeness. Isn’t that a horrible form of idolatry? And of course, God laughs at us and his laugh can be heard in the halls of prayer.

Don’t we get angry when others peg us, when others try to mold us, when others try to shackle us, when others try to force us to do what they want us to do, when others want us to be what they want us to be, when they want us to be in their image and likeness?

Doesn’t every man and woman grow up fighting their parents dictum: “My will be done.”

The boy whose father is an admiral doesn’t want to go to Annapolis. The boy whose father is a surgeon doesn’t want to go to med school. The daughter whose mother was an Olympic diver or gymnast, doesn’t want to spend hours and hours on becoming an athlete.

We want to choose our own salad dressing, our own college, our own hair style, underarm deodorant, our own future and our own friends.

THE OTHER IS FREE

One of the great learnings in life then is not only allowing another person to be free, but that the other person is free: free to choose, free to do what they want to do.

Yet people spend millions of dollars for cosmetics, cars, clothes, dinner engagements, health spas, weight loss to get another to like and love them.

Yet people spend millions of pounds of psychic energy planning and trying to get others to love them.

Yet people spend millions of units of time on phones, writing letters, visiting others, to get them to love them.

And the crash comes when we discover that love is free. If another loves us because of looks, cars, clothes, age, money, etc. all that can crumbles in an earthquake. Relationships need to be built on love that is free. Those are the best relationships. Those are the kind of relationships that stand in the test of time.

GOD

So too with God. God is free to love as God wants to love. God chooses. And all this is mystery and it causes anger and frustration. Yet look around. Go to class reunions. Look at who married whom. You'd be surprised. Some people settle in Scranton and some settle in Seattle or Sacramento. Life is funny. Choices are funny.

Can’t we allow God a sense of humor. Can’t we allow God to choose his friends. Can’t we allow God to do life as God wants to do life - to give some people more than others.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

So once more, once again, we come back to today’s gospel. We see that God has a sense of humor. God isn’t fair. Love isn’t fair. God has favorites. God plays favorites. God is free to do what God wants to as God. If God wants to make penguins and hippopotamus’, monkeys and octopus’, then God can make all of the above and all of the below - funny birds of the sky, fascinating fish of the sea and those who walk or run or slide along the surface of the globe.

US AGAIN

We want that freedom for ourselves, let’s let God have the same.

The heart of prayer then is letting go and letting God - letting God be God. The heart of love is being loved not because of anything we do, but because the other chooses to love us.

And that’s the shock of love: to find out that we are loved by another - and we had nothing to do with it.

CONCLUSION

And the greatest shock is that we are loved by God, not by any thing we do, but because God simply loves us. Sit in prayer and you’ll begin to hear the sounds of love: God’s love for you and maybe God’s love for the other person as well as that crazy guy you read about in the morning paper.