Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you. 1 Peter 5: 7
Our Savior and our God, we come with joy into Your holy presence. Please receive us as we bow low at Your feet. And speak Lord, for your servants wait to hear a word from You. Amen
After a hard day’s work it feels so good to go home, kick off your shoes and just relax. If you were carrying a heavy load (and some ladies’ bags can be very heavy!) how wonderful it feels to just lay it down and walk away from it. But that is just a temporary relief we enjoy. The following day we pick up our loads again and continue our journeys! However, when the Lord invites us to cast our cares upon Him it is intended to be a permanent relief. We are not expected to take up these cares again once we have given them to the Lord.
It seems that at the time our text was written the church was going through some rather trying times. Listen to the following: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you…” “For what glory is it, if, when [you] be [beaten] for your faults, [you] shall take it patiently?”
Suffering fiery trials and beatings are not easy burdens to bear. So in the midst of this situation, Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, exhorts the members of the early church to cast, not some, but all, of their cares upon the Lord. Now it is one thing to share a burden, it is quite another to cast all of the burden upon the person who has offered to help you. Of course it all depends on who is offering the help. Human helpers can only offer us limited help. But an Omnipotent Helper can offer us unlimited help! Hallelujah! That is the kind of helper we have in Jesus, “all our sins and griefs to bear!” Today, cast all of your cares upon Him.
The last half of our verse tells us why: “He careth for you.” There are those who can help us but they don’t care to; there are others who would like to, but are not able. In Jesus our Savior, is combined both the ability and the desire to help. The Bible repeatedly talks about the extraordinary love of God for the human race. The authors, trying to capture the depth of the Savior’s love have exclaimed at times: “Greater love has no man than this…” “For God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” “God is love.” He not only loves us, He is the embodiment of love. My vocabulary is not sufficiently developed to express this kind of love. I will need eternity to perfect it, and even then, I will fall far short!
“Does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth and song; As the burdens press, and the cares distress, And the way grows weary and long? O yes He cares-I know He cares! His heart is touched with my grief; When the days are weary, the long nights dreary, I know my Savior cares.” Frank E. Graeff (Church Hymnal, 181). How wonderful to have such a Savior! But sometimes we act like the man in this story:
A man was carrying a very heavy load. Another man passing by in a carriage offered him a ride. After thanking him he climbed into the rear of the carriage. They drove along together in silence until the man who was driving happened to look behind him. He could not believe His eyes! There in the carriage, with space to spare, sat the poor man with his load on his lap! When he was asked why he was still holding the load, his reply was more shocking than his behavior: “Sir you offered to carry me; I could not allow you to carry my load as well! Don’t ever doubt that God’s grace is sufficient to carry both you and your burden!