"Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you" - Part Two
(1 Peter 5:7 TNIV)
August signals the summer break for most, but the absence of work does not translate into the absence of worry - unless we can cultivate the lessons etched in 1 Peter 5:7. In the last Post, we explored the opening part of this verse, learning how to apply it as a prescription, rather than a passive comfort. Here, we look once more at this scripture, but this time to consider its conclusion, that “he cares for you”.
In recent months, the Lord has introduced an egg basket to my prayer life. Each time I am worried or afraid, brought low or have a task to achieve that troubles me, he invites me to bring the issue in prayer and then place it in an egg basket. And there, once covered in prayer, it is to lay.
While echoing the call to “cast my cares”, the egg basket itself illuminates the truth that “he cares for me”. For the egg basket of my prayers and cares is held by Jesus. His arms surround its woven frame, his hands tend each precious and ragged egg within.
Eggs are fragile. Vulnerable to the slightest knock. Prone to crack or break. At times we feel very much like an egg or are rendered so by our circumstances. When we feel thus, Jesus responds as the mother hen. In Matthew 23:37, he describes himself as such, praying over Jerusalem, he says: “how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (TNIV).
When God invites me to place my problems in the egg basket, he is not only asking me to trust him, but revealing his very character. He is showing me that I can cast my cares because he cares for me. God longs to gather us under his wings and take care of us. If casting our care instructs us to childlike faith, "he cares for you" expresses the heart of a mother hen, of a loving Father God.
Dear Readers, sometimes it is only when we let go of issues that God is able to move. How have you been able to cast your cares and give God the space to act?