If you were to build a canoe, you would choose your materials carefully. As the boat’s maker, you would best understand how to use the thing you have made. You would know what weather, water, and weight conditions it could handle. It would be a good canoe. It would have limits.

The same principle holds true when God looks at each of us. “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:13,14).

At times I’ve read these words and felt that when the Lord remembers I am made from dust, he’s disappointed. He thinks, “Why don’t you operate like someone carved from marble or cedar? Why aren’t you more resilient, more faithful, less prone to need my help?”

This isn’t the case though. When the Lord created humanity, he chose the stuff of earth to be his creative medium. He formed us from materials of the universe and proclaimed us “very good.”

Things aren’t what they were back in the first days after creation, but the Lord knows what we are made of—he chose the materials—and he finds great joy and goodness in us. God didn’t make a mistake when he crafted you. He knows where you will need help and where you thrive. He doesn’t sit in heaven shocked and disappointed. His love is endless. He delights in you. He doesn’t regret forming you, even on your hardest days.