Casting Cares

In a previous post I shared the idea of having a “worry time” each day, a time when I would tell God everything that was worrying me- and when the time was over, I’d let go of the worries. During the rest of the day, as a worry tried to come back, I’d tell it, “Not now. You’ll have to wait ’til my next worry time.” After using this practice for a while, I began to feel it was becoming artificial and depressing. I discovered I was stirring up worries that hadn’t been bothering me until I tried to think of them! So I quit for a while. Then I noticed I was beginning to slip back into old habits of worrying, but without the safety net of a designated worry time.

Saint Peter exhorts us to cast all our cares on God. (I Peter 5:7) Of course, I always ended worry time by turning my worries over to God, but only after I’d spent the prescribed amount of time, or walking distance, talking with God about them. The question was, did I need that specific time? Couldn’t I simply cast my cares onto God’s shoulders as soon as I recognized them, rather than telling them to come back tomorrow?

Maybe we can do it either way, depending on the seasons of our lives. In times when we seem bombarded with lots of worries and cares, perhaps it’s wise to compact them into worry time, if we can. That way we do have a safety net. We decide when we will consider these worries and for how long, and then we let go until the next time— that is, we let go of the worry. If there’s something specific we need to do to address an issue that’s causing us worry, we do that, but we “cast the care” of the issue on God. When in a period of relative calm, maybe we can just cast our cares on God as they show up. Do what we need to do, but let go of worrying right away.

The key, no matter how we do it, is to not let the worries, the cares, the frightening “what-ifs” keep talking and talking. They will drag us down; God wants to lift us up. The verse before the one exhorting us to “cast our cares” says, “ Humble yourselves … under the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you.” (verse 6) We can humble ourselves, among other ways, by remembering that our worrying won’t solve anything, but that God can, and desires to, work things out for the good of all concerned. And He has told us how to let go and let Him do it: by casting all our cares on Him, because He cares about us—or He “cares for” us. I like to recall that when I let go, when I cast my worries and cares on God, I’m giving the bulk of the burden to Him. And then my burden becomes light. (Matt 11:30)

Can you come up with a visual image of “casting your cares” on God? Can you throw them like a football, and trust God to run with them? Can you cast them like a fishing line (but then not reel them in)? Or can you write them down and put them in a “God box” or a “God can”? However we give our concerns and worries to God—whether in worry time or by throwing them into His hands or tossing them into His in-box or some other way—if we will truly cast our cares on God, we will be free.