Casting the Right Way

This week, Vonnie is hosting Monday Manna, so be sure to pop over to My Back Door and read the other entries, and link up if you want to participate. And we're also discussing this post at Living By Grace today. Would love to have you join the discussion there!

Today's verse is from from one of the New Testament epistles.

Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7

 I'm not much of a fisherman. I remember being younger, visiting my great-aunt and great-uncle in Acapulco, Mexico, and them taking me fishing for the very first time. I was probably five or six. I don't think I caught anything, but that wasn't the point. It was fun. And adventure. And I learned (sort of) how to use a fishing pole.

Photo from sxc.hu

Not that I ever needed that information again (at least not that I remember). But I knew what it meant to cast a line out. You'd "toss" it out into the water, and once that fish grabbed it, you reeled it back in.

So you can imagine my issues when I applied this definition of "cast" to today's verse. I stuck my worries on the end of a fishing pole and threw them out into the lake of the Lord's promises. But after a while, I got tired of waiting for answers, so I reeled them right back in.

And it did me not a bit of good. Because those anxieties hadn't unhooked. They came right back onto the shore, and settled back, nice and comfy, in my heart again. And it was as if they'd never left me in the first place.

Thankfully, that's not the type of casting Peter, or the Lord, speaks of here. The Lord loves us so much that He wants us to take each of our concerns, all our worries, every care, and give them to Him. For good. No reeling them back in. He can handle them MUCH better than we can.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to stop by Vonnie's blog for more Monday Manna - and join me for discussion at Living By Grace.

Riding God's Grace Over Rough Roads