Psalm 103

"he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust"

We often, crudely, pit the Old Testament against the New Testament. In the Old Testament God is wrathful and punitive. The moral vision is rooted in purity and Law. The New Testament, by contrast, focuses upon the mercy and love of Jesus. The moral vision flows out of grace.

But grace has its origin in the Old Testament. We find this in many places, but perhaps there is no better place than Psalm 103:

He forgives all your iniquity;
he heals all your diseases.

And:

He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve
or repaid us according to our iniquities.

And:

As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed
our transgressions from us.

These are some of the most moving and lyrical descriptions of grace in the entire Bible.

Beyond these descriptions of grace, what I find interesting in Psalm 103 is the source of the Lord's compassion. To be sure, the Lord's mercy is rooted in His character. But Psalm 103 floats something else as well:

For he knows what we are made of,
remembering that we are dust.

For me, this is one of the most comforting passages in Scripture. God know of what we are made of. He remembers that we are dust.

God knows we are frail and weak. We are dust. Consequently, the bar is very low! God doesn't have high expectations for us because he knows we are unable to meet them. Perfection just isn't in the cards. Moral consistency isn't anything we can achieve. We wobble and we waver. We falter and we fail. We bend and we break. We stumble and we slip.

Too much alliteration, but you get the idea. We're just not very dependable. And God knows this! And in knowing this, God extends mercy and compassion.

The more secular and non-religious way of saying all this is that God knows that we are human. And God loves us as humans, as broken and imperfect creatures. We are, after all, only dust.