“God works in mysterious ways.”
That is a line from William Cowper's hymn, not a verse. Scripture says something firmer: God's thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways, because His are higher, not because they are random.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. — Isaiah 55:8
Cowper wrote the hymn in 1773, and it has been sung so often that the first line has separated from its author and attached itself to the Bible. The hymn is good and true, and Cowper knew grief well enough to have earned every word of it. Still, the saying as it circulates today does something Isaiah does not do. It often functions as a shrug, a way of closing a conversation when someone's loss cannot be explained. Isaiah is doing the opposite of shrugging. God says His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways, and immediately compares the gap to the distance between heaven and earth, then follows it with the promise that His word goes forth and does not return void but accomplishes what He pleases. That is not mystery for its own sake. That is a purpose too high for us to trace, being carried out with certainty.
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