Here’s one reason why we might all want to get to heaven: To witness the epic throw-down verbal sparring match between two of scripture’s heavyweights – Isaiah…and the author of Ecclesiastes.
“In this corner…”
We have Isaiah…who in one of his most famous passages enjoins believers to ‘prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!’
“And in THIS corner…”
There’s the other dude…musing to no one in particular: ‘Consider the work of God. Who can make straight what God has made crooked?’
Perhaps because I’m more familiar with the passage from Isaiah, it seems like a greater comfort to me—at least at first glance. I WANT a God who evokes that kind of power. I NEED a God who can sort things out…tidy things up…and ultimately make things go MY way.
But when I stumbled upon the passage from Ecclesiastes yesterday, I have to say it stopped me in my tracks.
Could something about God, in fact, be crooked?
And then I read on in Ecclesiastes, and found this:
‘On a good day, enjoy good things, and on an evil day, consider: Both the one and the other God has made…’
It’s hard to say who knows more about God (and the way God chooses to work in our world)—Isaiah, or the other guy.
But reading the passage from Ecclesiastes did make me wonder: How would a Pharisee have handled the notion that God can perhaps be found in either the straight or the crooked path?
Just as beauty rarely appears through straight lines…so, too, holiness?
Let us pause now…to remember that we are in the presence of the Holy One.
With Us Still 
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I can only think of the saying – God writes straight with crooked lines. I use it all the time.
Indeed, Colleen. Which, of course, makes it all the more challenging to stick to the ‘straight and narrow…’ 😉