Stretched Out

¹ All of you who are thirsty, come to the water! Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat! Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk! ² Why spend money for what isn’t food, and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good; enjoy the richest of feasts. ³ Listen and come to me; listen, and you will live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful loyalty to David. ⁴ Look, I made him a witness to the peoples, a prince and commander of peoples. ⁵ Look, you will call a nation you don’t know, a nation you don’t know will run to you because of the LORD your God, the holy one of Israel, who has glorified you. ⁶ Seek the LORD when he can still be found; call him while he is yet near. ⁷ Let the wicked abandon their ways and the sinful their schemes. Let them return to the LORD so that he may have mercy on them, to our God, because he is generous with forgiveness. ⁸ My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. ⁹ Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans. ¹⁰ Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and don’t return there without watering the earth, making it conceive and yield plants and providing seed to the sower and food to the eater, ¹¹ so is my word that comes from my mouth; it does not return to me empty. Instead, it does what I want, and accomplishes what I intend.