Isaiah 55:6-9 - by Don Neuendorf
"Seek the Lord while he may be found..."
Do you mean to say that there may be a time when God cannot be found? I can give thanks that I have never experienced such a thing, but I have to acknowledge that it's possible.
It has nothing to do with how bad things are. It's not that in the middle of a battlefield, or in the fierce battering of a hurricane, or in the most crowded and busy place that somehow God is hard to find. No - under even the worst of physical conditions, God is still there. But...
There came a time when Pharaoh could no longer change. When he had hardened his heart against God - then God finally hardened his heart even further, in order to use his rebellion as a means to God's glory.
Even today we can do the same. We can, and some people have, labored so hard to build walls to keep God out, mocked God's people and God's name, labored to lead God's children away from faith, damaged their own minds with substances and their spirits with sin, so that finally there comes a time when he may not be found.
"My thoughts are not your thoughts," God says. Some people might rebel against the idea that God could finally abandon anyone to judgment. But if there is a difference in the way God acts and the way that we act it is this, that God waits FAR longer than we would. That God is far more patient and loving than we are. That God works harder and longer to regain the lost than we do.
God is not unjust when he finally abandons the sinner to his own rejection. We are unjust, because we have too often watched it happen and have not taken God's side to regain the lost one.