Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 1 Pet. 5:7
Dear heavenly Father, it’s centering and settling to begin this day knowing how much you care for us, your children. This is always good news to me, but especially this week. The combination of what I’ve taken on, plus the burdens that have been laid at my feet, are way too much for me to carry. I need your kind heart and broad shoulders.
So, by faith, I offload my cares upon you, gracious Father. Carry my burdens for the people I love—dear friends I so wish I could help or change. Sometimes I foolishly think if you’d only let me be the 4th member of the Trinity for fifteen minutes, I could do a lot of good in the lives of a lot of people. What arrogance. You haven’t called me to fix anyone, but to love as Jesus loves me. And you haven’t called me to vex about anyone; as though you’re not aware, don’t care, or need me to pester you.
Receive my anxieties about living in a world with a fickle economy, the daily-ness of terror, and the threat of diseases, like Ebola. Father, I cannot add one minute to my life through worry. In fact, I can take a lot away from my life through trying to carry burdens you alone can carry. Turn my “What if’s?” and “If only’s”, into “Now that’s”—now that Jesus has risen from the dead, everythinghas changed.
Father, you’ve numbered our hairs and days, and you know our fears and bottle our tears. You have the hearts of every king in your hand. Nothing catches you off guard or by surprise. There are no wrinkles in your brow or second-guessing in your courts. You give and you take away—blessed be your name, O Lord.
Whenever I am tempted to doubt your burden-bearing care, may Jesus’ cross loom large in my gaze. For it was there, Father, where you bore the greatest of all our burdens—my sin, and demonstrated the incomparable extent of your care. So very Amen I pray, in Jesus’ matchless and merciful name.
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