Utterly Insignificant

Isaiah 40-45 is one of my favorite stretches in the Bible. When I’m feeling down, this passage picks me up. It paints several pictures of who God is. And those pictures are big, which is why I love it. Because when God is big, everything else seems small.

Let’s look at one place where that “bigness” is quite literal:

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,
    or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
    or weighed the mountains on the scales
    and the hills in a balance? ...
Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket;
    they are regarded as dust on the scales;
    he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. (Is 40:12, 15)

I have a scale in my bathroom. When I weigh myself, I don’t want to know the weight of my clothes or shoes, so I do it when I am dressed for the shower. I want to be as precise as I can, so I check the zero on the scale. (It’s a cheap scale.) I have never once, though, dusted the scale. The weight of the dust on the scale is completely insignificant when weighing something as large as a human.

Compared to God, all of the nations combined are like dust on the scale, completely insignificant to one who uses his hand to mark off the heavens.

If the nations are like dust, what is one person? An individual dust mote? A speck of pollen? Maybe an atom in that speck of pollen? Compared to the God who measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, I am completely, utterly insignificant.

But not to him.

To him, I am treasure. The very hairs on my head are numbered. He knows when I sit and when I rise; he discerns my going out and lying down; he is familiar with all my ways but loves me still. I am fearfully and wonderfully made; my frame was not hidden from him when I was made in the secret place; all the days ordained for me were written in his book before one of them came to be. He was willing to leave the ninety-nine to go look for me. There was rejoicing in the presence of his angels when I repented. And he rejoices over me with singing still.¹

And the same goes for you.

The story is told of a woman who asked her pastor if it was OK to bother God by praying to him about small problems.

“My dear sister,” came the reply, “which of your problems do you think is ‘big’ to God?”

God is very, very big. I am very, very small. And so are my problems. They are less than dust on a scale. I can trust him to handle them.


1 Eph 1:18, Matt 10:30, Ps 139:2-2, 14-16, Matt 18:12-13, Luke 15:10, Zeph 3:17

Image: Misc pollen, Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility, Dartmouth College