| Isaiah 55:8-9 – “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” |
Modern man believes he’s figured it all out.
And truth be told, much of what we’ve discovered over the past century is remarkable. In just a few decades, we went from the Wright brothers flying a few feet above the sands of Kitty Hawk… to Neil Armstrong leaving his footprint on the moon.
A bit of mold in a Petri dish became penicillin.
A microscopic virus brought the world to a standstill, and we responded with vaccines that speak the body’s own biochemical language.
It’s impressive.
But the danger of knowing much is thinking we know it all.
We start to see ourselves as masters of our world—self-made and self-directed.
The problem is… we don’t know as much as we think we do.
Consider the story that unfolded just recently, when a small Japanese satellite returned from a rendezvous with an asteroid named Ryugu. This ancient rock wandered close to Earth—just 60,000 miles away—and science seized the chance to take a closer look.
The mission?
Find and analyze chondrules—tiny, seed-like mineral spherules about the size of a grain of sand, embedded in larger space rocks called chondrites.
Chondrites are the most common meteorites to land on Earth. Scientists hoped these ancient bits of cosmic dust might hold the secret to the origins of the universe.
One science writer declared, “Nothing is as important as the mystery of the chondrule.”
But even with this new data in hand, the mystery remains just that—a mystery.
John Wood, one of the leading astrophysicists in the field, finally admitted defeat.
“We still don’t understand what the meteorites are telling us, and sometimes I wonder if we ever will.”
Then he did something unexpected:
He walked away from science altogether… and became a painter.
Another scientist, Dr. Fred Ciesla of the University of Chicago, confessed:
“We can build a story about how planets form… but it’s obvious that there’s a piece of the story that we’re missing.”
The problem isn’t the story they want to tell.
It’s the story they often leave out.
Behind all things is a Creator.
The universe doesn’t just happen—it was crafted.
And the moment we forget that, we forget the most basic truth of all:
We are not God.
The prophet Isaiah once addressed people hungry for answers, people eager to understand the “why” behind life’s mysteries.
God’s response was this:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
“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
There’s wisdom in admitting what we don’t know.
Peace in surrendering to the One who does.
And rest in remembering that the God who understands the mysteries of chondrites… also understands you and me.
So maybe the best step forward isn’t to solve every question of the universe,
but to trust the One who wrote the story in the first place.
–Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com
