Resigning as Creator
We’re told we can be anything, but that promise often feels exhausting. Scripture offers a quieter truth: we aren’t the architects of our lives — we’re the work of a Potter. Rest begins when we resign from the job of Creator.
There’s a specific kind of silence you only find a few miles into a solo hike. It’s the moment when the white noise finally fades — the car doors slamming at the trailhead, the chatter of other hikers, the low-grade anxiety of your mental to-do list. In that quiet, the scale of things starts to reset.
You look up at a ridgeline that’s been there longer than your entire family tree. You notice the chaotic beauty of the forest floor — roots, needles, insects, decay, growth — all happening without commentary or crisis. And it hits you pretty quickly: none of this is trying to find itself.
The pine tree doesn’t have a brand. The rocks aren’t searching for their inner truth. The squirrel isn’t frozen by the fear of becoming the wrong version of itself. Everything out here exists with the quiet relief of being a creature.
Back in the “real world,” though — on a Tuesday morning — that relief is harder to come by. We carry a burden the rest of creation doesn’t: the pressure of self-invention.
The Exhaustion of the Architect
We’re told we can be anything. That our identity is a DIY project — a brand to curate, a persona to polish, a meaning to manufacture. To a child, “you can be anything” sounds like magic, but to an adult, it often sounds like a threat or an opportunity for failure. Because if I can be anything, then I might choose the wrong thing. I might invest years into a version of myself that turns out to be a dead end. I might wake up one day realizing I’ve built a life that doesn’t quite fit.
If you’ve ever stood in front of the mirror wondering which version of yourself you’re supposed to present today — or stared at the ceiling at 2 a.m., replaying the decisions that led you here — you’re not broken. You’re just exhausted from doing a job you were never meant to do. Because when we think we’re the architects of our lives, we miss how Scripture describes us as the building.
The Intimacy of the Dirt
Genesis makes that clear in a surprisingly earthy way. In Genesis 1, God creates by speaking: “Let there be …”. Creation unfolds at the speed of divine command. But in Genesis 2, the story slows down. The language shifts. God doesn’t just speak humanity into existence — he forms us.
"then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground..." — Gen. 2:7
The Hebrew word is yatsar. It’s the word used for a potter shaping clay (Isa. 64:8). That’s not distant power. That’s intimate craftsmanship. God stoops. He touches. He presses his hands into dust and gives it form. Before you ever chose a career, built a résumé, or decided who you thought you were supposed to be, God handled you. That’s why Psalm 103:14 lands with so much comfort:
“For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”
Out in the backcountry, we respect the limits of our gear. A 30-liter pack can’t hold 60 liters of equipment. A summer sleeping bag won’t survive a winter storm. Ignoring those limits doesn’t make you brave — it makes you foolish.
God treats us with that same practical kindness. He knows our limits. He knows we need sleep, food, rest, and margin. Being dust isn’t a defect in the design — it’s a known quantity. You don’t have to transcend your humanity to please God. You’re called to steward it.
The Statue of the King
If yatsar reminds us how personally we were made, Genesis also lifts our eyes with another word: tselem. Genesis 1 says we’re made in God’s image.
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ..." — Gen. 1:26
In the ancient world, a tselem was a statue a king would place in a distant territory to declare, “I rule here.”
That’s what you are. Your dignity or value isn’t something you generate. It’s something bestowed. God placed his image in you as a declaration of his rule and goodness. But here’s the part we often miss: the king’s statue doesn’t belong to the province — it belongs to the king.
When we try to chisel away at our identity based on shifting feelings or cultural pressure, we aren’t discovering freedom. We’re damaging something precious that doesn’t belong to us. We treat God’s image as raw material for self-expression, as if we found it lying around and decided to repurpose it. But it isn’t ours to reshape.
Handing in Your Resignation
Out in creation, there are clear distinctions — light and dark, land and sea, male and female. Scripture doesn’t present these — particularly the last distinction — as accidents or constraints, but as the nature of ordered reality. God calls our construction “very good” (Gen. 1:31).
The relief of the Christian life is realizing we can stop obsessively asking, “Who am I?” and start resting in a better question: “Whose am I?” Psalm 100:3 says it plainly:
“Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his…”
Maybe you’re tired because you’ve been managing a role you were never designed to fill. You were never meant to be the Creator. Resigning from the job of self-invention isn’t failure — it’s obedience. And more than that, it’s rest.
So today, step back into the field of your life. Notice the grain of the wood. Feel the weight of the clay. And exhale a sigh of relief, remembering this: you’re a creature — intentionally formed by a Potter who loves the work of his hands.
