Our Heavenly Father knows how we are made, that we are just dust (Psalm 103).

But don’t you ever get tired of it, Lord? Tired of me?

All of my apologies, my regrets, tasting bitter on the back of my tongue. All of my, “I’ll do better next time,” this refrain set on “repeat.” In my smallness— my dust-ness —I get tired of me. I get weary, carrying this dust-covered defeat.

Don’t you ever get tired of all of my failure, Lord?
When You’re so much higher and stronger and wiser and better…
I just can’t imagine how I would feel, if I were You.

But I guess that is the point.

I think that, for so long, I imagined God thinking like me. Often I go back that way, without realizing it, and I think of Him as small, like me. Of course, in my smallness, in my dust-ness, it’s as if I want to bring Him down to my level. But He is not like me, not in that small and dusty way.

I am ever grateful that the Lord is way better than me and way better than you. He is better than any missionary, better than any pastor, even better than your tirelessly praying grandma. He will outlast time and sickness and decay. He towers over failure and defeat and worry and fear.

While we get weary, trying to build a life, because all we have to work with is this dust…He doesn’t, “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7).

And when I just can’t wrap my head around it, around the bigness of God, I stop trying. And this is a good place, where all is right, even on those days when the world and I have gone all wrong.

When I feel low, I take comfort: God’s ways are just flat-out higher than ours!

In fact, the Lord is so much higher that we can’t even crane our necks to see Him…and because of this, and because He loves us, He stoops down to meet with us.  He is near when we are broken-hearted, when we fail and disappoint (Psalm 34:18).

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite'” (Isaiah 57:15, ESV).

And tomorrow, before my feet feel soft carpet, His mercies are already overflowing (Lamentations 3:22-23).

He is endless love and mercy. Even though I don’t know what that is like—to have constant, steady, abundant kindness and patience—He does. He is, because His Name is I AM.

Do you feel His mercy? Can you feel it? If instead, you feel stuck in your dust, remember that the Potter starts with dust when He is making useful vessels.