March 23

…Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7

Calm me, my God, and keep me calm,

Soft resting on Thy breast;

Sooth me with holy hymn and psalm,

And bid my spirit rest.

Calm as the ray of sun or star

Which storms assail in vain;

Moving unruffled through earth’s war,

The eternal calm to gain.

Horatius Bonar

Every word of this precious verse is golden. And the fact of its standing here as a divine command is a proof not only of what is possible for us to do, but of what God is prepared to enable us to do. His commands are enablings; His words are power words; His light is life. If only you are willing to live the glad, free, carefree life, and dare to step out on the waves of His care, you will find that, with the resolve to obey, there will come from Him the wondrous power that makes obedience possible. 

And it is in the highest degree necessary to obey this precept. So only can we be peaceful and strong. We cannot stand the strain of both work and worry.  Two things come between our souls and unshadowed fellowship with God, sin and care. And we must be as resolute to cast our care on the Lord as to confess our sins to Him, if we would walk in the light as He is in the light. One yelping dog may break our slumber on the stillest night. One care may break our peace and hide the face of God, and bring a funeral pall over our souls. We must cast all our care on Him if we would know the blessedness of unshadowed fellowship. 

There may be pain—but no doubt of the Father’s love, no worry about the issues, no foreboding as to the long future, which to the eye of faith shines like the horizon rim of the sea on which the sun is shining in its utmost splendor while dark clouds brood overhead. 

Care, according to the Greek word, is that which divides and distracts the soul, which diverts us from present duty to weary calculations of how to meet conditions which may never arrive. Fret; worry; anxiety; the habit of anticipating evil; crossing bridges before we reach them; the permission of foreboding fears about the future; all that attitude of mind which broods over the mistakes of the past and dwells on the shadows which coming events may cast, rather than on the love and will of God—this is Care. 

Alas for some! They always spend their lives thus. One long, weary monotone of anxiety—struggling against winds and waves, instead of walking over the crests of the billows; treading a difficult, stony pass, instead of being borne along in one of the twenty thousand chariots of God. 

How infinitely better to cast our care upon the strong, broad shoulders of Christ! Treat cares as you treat sins. Hand them over to Jesus one by one as they occur. Commit them to Him. Roll them upon Him. Make them His. By an act of faith look to Him, saying, “This, Lord, and this, and this, I cannot bear. Thou hast taken my sins; take my cares: I lay them upon Thee, and trust Thee to do for me all, and more than all, I need. I will trust and not be afraid.” 

Let us trust Him. Tongue cannot tell the completeness, the delicacy, the tender thoughtfulness of the care that will gather and shelter us, as the nervous, careful hen gathers her brood under her wing.

F.B. MEYER

Tried by Fire