One of our favorite songs in summer camp was written by the apostle Peter: “Cast your burdens… onto Jesus… He cares for you!” Usually four or five campers would lead the song as there are hand motions and a dance involved. (The kids dance a little better than I do.) After singing this song over eight weeks of the summer, one day I asked the children: “How do we do this? How do we cast our burdens, our cares, our anxieties on Jesus? What does this mean?” I love the answers kids (and counselors) give. “You pray and tell God what is bothering you,” said one child. How true! Surely a part of casting our burdens on Jesus is communicating exactly what we feel. We can be bluntly honest with our Father in Heaven. He already knows every detail of our lives, but we can hand off our anxieties as we simply tell him the weight we are carrying and ask for grace.
Sometimes this communication is the hardest thing. When I’m hurting, I tend to withdraw. This time last year I was in the hospital for a stem cell transplant. Most of those twenty-one days I just wanted to pull the sheets over my head and hope the time would pass quickly. We all have our own personalities and ways of dealing with hardship, but I can tell you from experience that God can handle anything we tell him… our fears, our anger, our disappointment, and our pain. Even under my sheets, all hooked up to medical machines, I could cast the good, the bad, and the ugly on the strong shoulders of One who endured far worse than I’ll ever experience.
Shannon, a wise counselor, added another suggestion to our camp discussion: “When we have problems and worries, it helps to remember how God has helped us in the past. When we recall how God has rescued us on other occasions, we can quickly cast our present burdens on him.” How true this is! Ten years ago our family was stuck in Athens, Greece on the way home from Jerusalem. All five of us were flying stand-by and unfortunately all flights were oversold. “Sir, I’m afraid it will be at least five days before you will be able to make to Atlanta.” It was Saturday; school started on Monday. I thought, “Five days! I’ve got to get back to school! And how am I going to pay for five more nights in Athens?!” Of course our kids were celebrating. “Five more days in a hotel and excused absences from school… hooray!” So as they headed to the pool to swim, I headed to our room to cast my burdens on the Lord. I remember it like it was yesterday. God said, “I’ll get you home on time,” and the next day, to our children’s disappointment, we were all on a plane for the States. Within a week, a doctor friend and his wife knocked on our door to tell me I had cancer. One of my first thoughts was this: “God, you got us home from Athens, you can take care of this too.” Some might think, “Dana, these two problems are not quite the same… getting on an airplane and cancer?” But don’t ‘little’ burdens often seem like ‘huge’ burdens? Can the God who rescues us in lesser trials also rescue us in fiery trials? “Is anything too hard for God?” An angel once asked Abraham this rhetorical question. Sarah laughed at an impossible promise, but “Abraham believed God…”
Maybe this is the most important part of I Peter 5:7 – “… because He cares for you.” This is the test of faith. When all is dark; when there seems to be no hope; when our minds say ‘impossible’… do we believe He cares? The enemy tries to drown us with logical questions. “If He cares, why is this happening? If He cares, would He not intervene? In fact, is God even there?” Never criticize a person in pain. Never judge the heart of a fellow sojourner. Steer clear of simplistic, flippant comments to those going through difficulty. Never take the path of Job’s friends who misrepresented God… though they thought they had things figured out. But this we can know without a doubt: “He cares.” “He cares for you” is the Good News for the world and we are his ambassadors called to live this beautiful message.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28