“My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts, Neither Are Your Ways My Ways, Saith the Lord”
Isaiah 55:8–9
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Elder Tad R. Callister wrote:
“Can we of our own accord acquire the wisdom of God? What if in the course of eternity we were to read every book, master every mathematical equation, and conquer every language? Would we then be God’s intellectual equal? The answer is a resounding no! We would still be restricted to a finite mind, to a limited number of thoughts at a given moment. The Lord made reference to this disparity: ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. . . . 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). King Benjamin echoed the same sentiments: ‘Believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend’ (Mosiah 4:9). Sometime, somehow, somewhere, we must be ‘added upon.’ We must receive a divine endowment to be able to entertain multiple, even infinite thoughts, concurrently. Only then can our mind begin to become like God’s.
“We cannot become like God without such an endowment—in essence, a manifestation of grace. And that grace comes because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. That was the promise Enoch understood and expressed to God: ‘Thou hast made me, and given unto me a right to thy throne, and not of myself, but through thine own grace’ (Moses 7:59).”
(The Infinite Atonement [2000], 265–66.)
