“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
When someone says to you “Is that normal?” my response is almost always “Whatever that is!” Each of us has our own normal. My normal may look super chaotic to some and their normal may not be something I would embrace.
What does that mean? Normal. The definition is “conforming to a standard, usual, typical or expected.” And that is where God is not normal. He never conforms and he never does anything in a typical or expected way.
Recently, I’d been praying for something. I wasn’t sure what it would look like when God answered and honestly, I had no pre-conceived notion of how God would answer. And then he did. A week or two passed and I got a call. Someone was asking to meet. I said yes because when you get a random call out of the blue, you have to go see if it’s God calling.
I attended the meeting and sure enough, it was God calling!
The next day I was talking to God about it and it was then I realized he’d answered my prayer. Want to hear something funny? He answered it totally outside of anything I would have thought. He showed up as only he could. The way all the pieces fit together, the story that went along with the meeting and the prayer I had been praying, only God could orchestrate that.
When God shows up in my life I have two reactions. I want to dance around the room in celebration and then I want to drop to my knees and worship (all at the same time.) You see, there is no normal for God. He doesn’t do anything the way we expect and even if we don’t have any expectations, what he does is so outside the realm of what we’d ever imagine! And in my experience, he doesn’t do the same thing twice. Wrap your mind around that!
I don’t know about you but I’ll take God’s “normal” any day of the week. It’s so much more fun to follow a God that isn’t standard, usual or typical. Don’t you think?