Cast your Cares

Psalm 55:22 NIV: Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you.

Anyone out there carrying some heavy things? This week’s art is for you. David starts this Psalm with, “Listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea; hear me and answer me. My thoughts trouble me, and I am distraught.” In other words, when he later talks about casting cares, we know these were personal hard things.

The word “cast” in Hebrew isn’t a gentle setting aside of something. The word means to throw, hurl, fling, cast away, and shed. It’s a power throw, using every muscle fiber to get something as far away as possible. And what are we to hurl? Our cares, which in Hebrew refers to our lot in life or our burdens. Interestingly, when Peter quotes this verse in the New Testament, he translates care into anxiety, writing “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)

Peter understands, like I often feel, that our lot in life – the circumstances in our internal self, our families, our towns, our country, our world – frequently causes anxiety. The Greek word for anxiety that Peter uses means dividing and fracturing a person’s being into parts. What an excellent definition for worry, but also for grief, anger, chronic pain, discontentment, envy, etc.

I’d love to get rid of anxiety or burdens, so when David and Peter say to throw them away, honestly, it sounds too easy, which brings us to the promise that David attaches to this verse: God will sustain you. The core idea of the word sustain is to uphold or support something so it does not collapse. In Hebrew, this verb has something called a piel stem attached, which intensifies and adds a continuing effect to the verb. In other words, David doesn’t imply a simple one-time support, but that God will sustain, nourish, and uphold you continually (which is why I used an exoskeleton to symbolize this).

Now, I wish this verse said, throw your worries away, and God will magically make your life perfect and without trouble. That is not God’s purpose, however, and what he promises, believe it or not, is better. By handing them over, he takes them on his shoulders AND provides the strength, peace, courage, and ability to keep going.

What burden are you carrying around as you journey through life? If you only set it down occasionally, it’s easy to pick it back up – maybe it’s time to hurl it, and let God start sustaining you.