Precious Dust — A LifeWords Devotion

Psalm 103:13-14

A newly married young woman once had to undergo facial surgery to remove a tumour. It left her with a misshapen mouth due to the severing of a nerve. The husband was called in to see her after the operation. She was embarrassed about her mouth. He wasn’t. He promptly kissed her. Only the surgeon who was looking on saw that the man deliberately shaped his own mouth to better connect with his wife’s now twisted lips. A gesture of love which adapted to the imperfections of the loved one.

Which is very much what God does in loving his human creation. He knows we are dust, to quote this Psalm. That is, he realises we are not shining examples of virtue; we are not little gods. We are dependent creatures whose egotistic self assertion has twisted us out of proper shape.

But God hasn’t given up on us. He has not gone off in search of some more fitting creatures to love. We are it: we are the apple of his eye. So, he loves us in spite of our innumerable imperfections. His love adapts to our fallibility. He doesn’t demand we get back in shape before loving us. He rather loves us as we are. It is in fact his love which helps gets us back into our proper shape.

Praise him that we need not hide our shortcomings from him. Praise him that we can let him love us into the wholeness that he longs us to have.

Blessings,