NOTES for Isa 55:6-8

“Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near” Strange words: Is God not always near us? Of course always, but in reality, not always we can find Him. But it doesn’t mean that He hides deliberately from us and behaves cruelly towards us. It sometimes happens that a longtime believing and asking person forgets about God, or prays by habit, not understanding which inestimable gift is God's presence. So God can deprive of this feeling of His presence, so that we understand how much life without God is horrible than a life with God.

But, probably, it happens again mostly that we call the Lord with bad intentions: not for Him Himself, and even not to ask for something good, but, for example to ask for God to punish our enemy, or to ask God for obtaining the person, with whom we are in love. Then he can seem to us that God doesn’t hear our prayer. That’s not the case, He hears it, but doesn’t fulfill by love for us. If we correct our ways, our thoughts and our desires and we direct them towards love, towards God - it turns out that He is very near.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” We understand it very often like this: "well, we cannot understand God, we need something easier ", or " the ways of God are so complex, we cannot understand them and cannot cross them, we shall then go our own way, in a simple way". That’s not what the Lord means. He asks us not to transfer on Him our human representations of good and evil, justice and mercy etc. Yes, we are created in the image of God, but it doesn’t mean that we can imagine God, Whom "nobody has ever seen". God is different. Completely different from us. And His love is more than what we can imagine. Then, it is better not to give full swing to our imagination, trying to fancy God’s thoughts and ways, but simply try hard, by living according to the Gospel, answer to God's immense love.