Early in the morning, when the mist was thick and the water was still, my husband and I would steal away for a day of fishing. Truth be told, I loved it just as much as he did.
There’s a certain calm that comes with casting your line, feeling it sink and waiting by the water for that familiar tug.
Sometimes, it’s subtle. Other times, it’s a surprising yank. But it’s a certain tug that lets you know it’s time to snag hard and reel fast to land whatever it is on the other end.
But I was never one for skipping stones across the water. I’m not good at it and I never really saw the point. Every stone you throw sinks.
There’s a certain art to skipping stones though.
You skillfully cast them at a specific angle so that they skim the top of the water, skipping until its momentum is gone and it has nowhere else to go but down, never to be seen again.
1 Peter 5:7 tells us, “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.”
God is well aware that life comes with cares. Some that overwhelm us. Some too hard to bear.
- He is near to the brokenhearted. (Psalm 34:18)
- He bids us to place our load upon Him. (Matthew 11:29)
- He extends rest to our weary souls when we come to Him. (Matthew 11:28)
- He offers not only to give us the peace and the strength that we need…but to be our peace and strength. (Ephesians 2:14, Psalm 28:7)
He doesn’t always change our circumstances, but He strengthens us through them.
But there’s a catch in our understanding of 1 Peter 5:7.
Sometimes, we walk through the hard places in our lives with our hearts in turmoil, our minds a wreck, and feeling weighted down by whatever it is we are going through, simply because we miss the meaning of this 1 Peter 5:7 invitation to cast our care upon the Lord.
You see, the problem often is in the casting.
Perhaps you’re hanging on to that which you should be letting go.
Some times, we cast like we’re fishing instead of casting like we’re skipping stones.
We fling it to God and then stand there, keeping our eye on it, as we wait for any old kind of tug (subtle or sudden) that might prompt us to pull it back in so we can handle it ourselves.
We yank in the line to check the status of what we were supposed to cast to God.
We don’t really cast it to the Lord. We keep it tied to a string so we can pull it back in whenever we feel a tug on our heart or curiosity calls back our once-cast cares.
When what we should be doing is, casting our cares like we’re skipping stones. Slinging them to heaven and leaving them there with God. Allowing them to sink into the vastness of His mercy and providential care.
What about you?
- Have you been casting your cares to the Lord like you’re casting a fishing line?
- Or have you learned the skillful art of casting your cares to the Lord like you skipping stones across the water?
- Are you hanging on to that which you should be letting go?