1 Peter 5:7: “…casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you.”
What are we to do with our worries, cares, and anxieties in life? There are financial concerns, health concerns, worries concerning our families, anxiety about our future, and a hundred other issues we could possibly name. Peter encourages us to “cast” all of our cares on God. That word for “casting” means “to throw upon” or “to cast upon” in the sense that you cause responsibility for your cares to be upon someone else, namely, upon God. “Casting” also means “to put responsibility on” or “to make responsible for.” When you “cast,” in this sense, you are casting in such a way that you make someone else responsible for whatever it is you are casting or throwing. To help us understand what this word is saying, we can see this word’s use in Luke 19:35. In Luke 19:35, for example, this word is used, and it said that they “threw” (throw or cast) their clothes “upon the colt.” Understanding this word-picture will help us to grasp how God can carry our cares. Once they put their clothes upon the colt, they were no longer carrying those clothes. The burden of carrying the clothes shifted from the people carrying those clothes to the colt who was now carrying those clothes. They were no longer responsible for the clothes; the colt was now responsible for the clothes because it was carrying them. Once the clothes had been cast upon the colt, it was physically impossible for the people to also carry the clothes. Why? Because the clothes were resting on the colt and not on the people! If we “cast” our cares on God, then we are no longer carrying them, but He is!
You could even put this idea into baseball terms. Once I throw a baseball into the woods, I am no longer holding the baseball. It is impossible for me to throw a baseball into the woods and to keep holding onto that baseball at the same time. In the same way, we see that Peter is telling us to “throw” or “cast” our cares & our anxieties upon God. We give our cares to God in such a way that we are making Him responsible for our cares now. We are putting the responsibility of our cares upon God now. We have, ourselves, at some point, taken responsibility for our cares, but no longer! We are now to give God the responsibility of handling our cares now. You may remember that old phrase, “The buck stops here!” It implies that the decision (and the authority) about a particular matter stops at a particular person (the boss or the president or whoever). It means that that particular person is responsible for making the decision. In the same way, given our passage of Scripture here, we used to be where the “buck” would stop with our cares and concerns, but now we have allowed the “buck” to stop with God! When it comes to carrying our cares, the buck stops at God! We’ve “passed along” our “buck” to Him. May we cast our cares upon God and let Him carry what we cannot, and should not, carry.