What God thinks …

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For 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

“Every thorn has its rose!” I say…

“That’s not the song title!” someone shouts.

My friends laugh.

And that’s how it begins…

An accidental misspeak that turns into a joke…

And then turns into a habit.

“Every thorn has its rose,” I say whenever things don’t turn out the way we all hoped.

I mean it as a statement of optimism…

A way of saying…

We’ll move past this problem…

The real title…“Every Rose Has Its Thorn”…

Sound very pessimistic…

A way of saying that no matter how good things seem…

Trouble is on the way.

I like my mangled title better than the real one.

One of the best-known Bible verses comes to mind…

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me: your rod and your staff, they comfort me.  Psalm 23:4

Even when we face the thorn of difficulty or death…

God is with us.

Jesus warns of the thorns we will face…

In the world you will have tribulation.

And offers us the rose of His victory over the forces of the world

…take heart; I have overcome the world.”  John 16:33

Sometimes it seems backwards to repeat what God tells us He thinks …

But maybe it is our thinking…

Our common sense…

That is backward…

Consider what common sense says about power and greatness…

And then consider what God thinks about power and greatness…

But Jesus … said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave… Matthew 20:25-27

What God thinks…

Is so very different from what we think.

We want to skip the thorn and get right to the rose…

But sometimes it is the thorn itself which opens the path to the rose…

Consider the thorns of death and atonement born on the cross by Jesus…

…the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  Hebrews 12:1-2

Thorns without which we would never know the rose of God’s saving grace…

Thorns without which we would never know what God thinks about our future…

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  John 3:16