Isaiah 55

Isaiah 55:1:
“Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price.

"On the heels of the invitation, God posed the question that haunts every generation of Adams descendants. "Why spend money on what is not bread and labor on what does not satisfy?" Then like a frustrated parent determined to get through to his inner child, He said, "Listen, listen to me and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare." I believe God's prescription for those who possess an inner thirst and hunger they cannot fill is implied in Isaiah 55:6. Those who are spiritually thirsty and hungry need only to do this: "Seek the Lord while he may be found and call on Him while He is near."
--Beth Moore

Isaiah 55:2:
Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance.

“Spend.” This word literally means “weigh.” It referred to the counting out and weighing of silver or gold as the price paid for something.
“For something that will not nourish you.” Literally, the Hebrew says, “why do you weigh out money for the not-bread.” This is emphatic and dramatic. Bread is emblematic of the support of life or of whatever contributes to man’s support, happiness, and comfort. But in this regard, what man finds is really not-bread, it is futility.

Isaiah 55:3-5:
3 Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.
4 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people.
5 Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee.

Isaiah 55:6-7:
6 Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

“Seek” is not the idea of seeking something lost, but is parallel to “call” and thus striving and obtaining something valuable that is available to obtain. The Lord can be found. He has brought himself “near” by the work of the Servant. But it is also true that this seeking is urgent. The Lord has brought himself near, but the offer is temporary. We don’t usually think this way. We think the offer is available as long as we live and we can get it anytime we want. That just isn’t so! Spiritual procrastination is breeds callousness and laziness. When our spirit’s are stirred the first time, it is usually the strongest stirring we will ever have. Ignore it, and we will be like Felix. The convenient time never comes.
Therefore, seeking is a decision regardless of the feelings of the moment. He did not say, “seek if the Lord has moved you to do so.” Throughout the text the merchant has been appealing to reason on the basis of what will satisfy and what will end in vanity. Therefore, seeking the Lord. Why would you be a fool and do otherwise? --Woodlands

BB Warfield Files

He who begins by seeking God within himself may end by confusing himself with God.
-Benjamin B. Warfield

Isaiah 55: 8-9:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God did not create Covid. But He is allowing it as part of his purpose for us all. And He will bring good out of Covid, even though we can’t see it now or believe it. God has promised that He will. --Steve Sawyer

The practice of theology requires careful attention to reading and meditating, and then to applying the word of God, while at the same time refusing to be speculative by going beyond what is actually written. Our limited human understanding is both suspicious and fearful and either limits God or creates Him too much like a Divine Super Hero. Job is a good example of this. Throughout all his tribulations, he was confronted head on with all kinds of theologies, and religious applications of which might have originally brought him some comfort, only to find out most of them were not even true. Can God be theologized? No. Some of our ideas and cliches create more separation than union. "For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. " 1Corinthians 1:21

What if God created humanity for its obedience instead of its ability to comprehend the mechanics of a world that cultivated such obedience?
If God is on a higher ontological level than humanity (Isa. 55:9), then it makes sense for his sovereign purposes to be incomprehensible to us. For to explain evil in an exhaustive sense, so as to see the big picture behind all the facets and details, is to rise to the level of God, which is impossible for finite beings anyway.
The crux, it seems, is not with evil or God, but with our limitations and assumptions about the issue. We often assume we can find an answer to it, and we assume God ought to explain himself for the things he does (see Job 38:1-41:34; Rom. 11:33-35). These are dangerous assumptions, for they distort a multifaceted issue into over-simplistic parameters.
When the first humans listened to the serpent (Gen. 3:1-7), they submitted themselves to the Creation instead of the Creator, resulting in an upheaval of God’s good world (1:31; Rom. 5:12). Humanity as a whole is thus faced with an intolerable dilemma: we can conceive God’s mysteries, but we cannot comprehend them (see Eccl. 3:11). -Alex Aili

Isaiah 55:10-13:
10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.