“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD” Isaiah 55:8 NIV
The problem wasn’t the platypus. The problem was the categories people had created for understanding it.
In 1798, a strange animal skin arrived in England from Australia. It had the bill and feet of a duck, the fur of an otter, and a wide, flat tail. A naturalist named George Shaw examined it and assumed someone had stitched it together as a trick. Other scientists agreed the animal made no sense, and for years many insisted it wasn’t real.
Decades later, naturalists learned that this same animal laid eggs. Mammals nurse their young. They don’t lay eggs. But this one did. Again, many refused to believe it. It took almost a hundred years, until 1884, before scientists finally accepted that a mammal could lay eggs.[1]George Shaw, “The Duck-Billed Platypus, Platypus anatinus,” The Naturalist’s Miscellany 10, no. 118 (June 1799), pls. 385–86, https://doi.org/10.5962/p.304567.
The categories scientists had built for understanding animals had no room for a creature like this one. So instead of adjusting the categories, they doubted what was right in front of them.
Sometimes we do the same thing with God. We decide how He should answer, who He should use, or what His work in our lives should look like. Maybe we think God can’t reach a certain person. Maybe we think a certain kind of pain can’t produce anything good. And when God doesn’t fit the categories we’ve created for Him, we can miss what He’s doing.
The Bible book of Isaiah says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8 NIV). God doesn’t ask to be understood on our terms. He asks us to trust Him on His.
Where in your life have you already decided what God can’t or won’t do?
