He Knows What We Are Made Of, and the Psalm Says So in Those Words

The thing he has never said is that he thinks God is disappointed in him.

Not angry. Disappointed, which is worse, and quieter, and impossible to argue with. It has the shape of a father who expected more and has stopped mentioning it.

He would not defend that theologically. If you asked him whether God is disappointed in him he would say no, that is not how it works, and he would be able to say why. Then he would go home and live the other way, because the belief he actually operates on is not the one he could defend, it is the one that runs when he is not paying attention.

And underneath it is a very simple assumption: that there is a level of strength a serious man is supposed to have, and that everybody else has it, and that his failure to produce it over and over is being noted.

There is a psalm that goes at that assumption directly, and the thing it uses to take it apart is dirt.

The psalm gives a reason and the reason is physical

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13-14)

For he knoweth our frame.

The word frame is a builder's word. It is the structure of a thing, what it can bear, how it is put together. A man who knows the frame of a building knows what load it will take, and knows it before he loads it.

He remembereth that we are dust.

Not forgets and has to be reminded. In Scripture, remembering is an active word: God remembers a covenant and then acts on it. He is holding this fact about a person in mind and operating from it.

And notice the logic of the two verses together. The pity comes first, and then the reason for it, and the reason is not that people mean well or are trying hard. The reason is what they are made of.

Which means the assumption that a certain level of strength is expected is not a slightly exaggerated version of the truth. It is the opposite of what this psalm says God is working from.

You have a frame He knows and you were never assessed against a strength you do not have. Psalm 103:14 says he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a stronger stretch who makes that a thing a man believes about himself rather than only about people in general.

The word used for how He feels about it

The verse before uses a comparison, and it is worth not skipping past.

Like as a father pitieth his children.

Pity in modern English has gone bad. It sounds like looking down. In the older sense, and in this psalm, it is the word for what a father feels when he sees his child struggling with something too big for them, and it is not contempt. It is the thing that makes a man cross a room.

And Isaiah, describing God's handling of the weakest part of a flock:

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40:11)

Gently lead those that are with young. The pace of the whole flock gets set by the slowest ones in it. That is a decision about management, and it is made in favor of the ones who cannot keep up.

That verse sits eighteen verses before the one about giving power to the faint, in the same chapter, which means the same passage says both: He carries the ones who cannot walk, and He supplies the ones who have nothing.

You are led at the pace of what you can carry and you were never expected to keep up with the fastest thing in the field. Isaiah 40:11 says He gently leads those that are with young, and it is His Spirit who makes a shepherding sentence something a man experiences rather than admires.

What He does with the record

And then the verse two lines earlier, which is the one about distance.

As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)

As far as the east is from the west. Not north from south, which is a measurable distance with two poles in it. East and west do not meet. A man walking east never arrives at west.

That is chosen. It is the one direction in the compass that has no endpoint, and the psalm uses it to describe a distance that has already been established: so far hath he removed, past tense, done.

So the man who is quietly certain that his record is being consulted is operating from a filing system that this verse says does not exist. The removal already happened and the distance chosen was the one with no end to it.

You have transgressions removed to a distance with no endpoint and you were never being measured against a file. Psalm 103:12 says so far hath he removed our transgressions from us in the past tense, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a settled fact something a man lives out of rather than argues for.

And if the disappointment you carry has gone somewhere darker, if it has reached not wanting to be here, that is not a thing to hold alone. A doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust who will pick up the phone. In the United States the 988 crisis line answers day and night. Nobody is asked to carry that by himself.

Where the strength was supposed to come from

And the sentence that resolves the whole question of the missing strength, which Paul got as an answer to a prayer that was turned down.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

My strength is made perfect in weakness.

That is not a consolation prize. It is a description of the mechanism. The weakness is not the thing to be overcome before the strength arrives; it is the condition the strength operates in.

Paul asked three times for the thing to be removed and it was not, and what he got instead was an explanation of what his own weakness was for.

Which is worth having for a man who has been trying to produce a level of strength for twenty years. He has been trying to reach a starting line that the letter says he was already standing on.

You have His strength made perfect in exactly what you have been apologizing for and you were never asked to supply your own. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says my strength is made perfect in weakness, and it is His Spirit who is described in that same letter as the one at work in a man rather than the man working himself up.