13 As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
14 For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.
As we continue our Summer Psalm meditation in Psalm 103, I have a personal question: How many people really know you?
Sometimes I think about human relationships like concentric circles, where there is this gigantic outer ring of people who are total strangers–They’ve never even seen me before. That’s 99.99999999 of the planet who don’t care about me at all.
Then there’s a circle of acquaintances, friends of friends, extended family, etc. who also don’t really care but they might recognize me in a crowd or be forced to be civil to me at a company party or a class reunion. There’s a pretty big ring of people I know casually who I really enjoy and would enjoy getting to know better but they’re not-yet truly friends. There’s a circle of friends and extended family who are much closer, and then there’s an Inner Ring.
Not that it’s elite. It’s just small. It’s basically the people who have seen me in my pjs.
Or at least the people I wouldn’t be embarrassed to see me in my pjs. I feel safe and secure in their love at my best and at my worst. At my strongest and at my weakest. The precious few for whom I have cooked and cleaned and who I know would cook and clean for me too.
There’s a much deeper knowing, a deeper trust, greater compassion, vulnerability, and care.
Psalm 103:13-14 wants us to understand the love of God is like the bullseye of all concentric circles. The deepest, closest, most extravagantly loving relationship you can imagine: A parent with their small, adorable, but helpless child, for example. God’s love is like that.
His relationship to us isn’t an outer circle kind. He doesn’t look at us like a total stranger who we accidentally cut off in traffic. He doesn’t move us around a cosmic chessboard like pawns. He knows us intimately, all the way in–to our most frail and fragile physical and mental and spiritual conditions.
Instead of blowing us away like the dust we are, he breathes life into that dust and makes us dear children.
Oh that we would rejoice in God at the center of our life because,
13 As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
14 For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.