I like to break down verses word for word. “Cast all your cares.” What an image that is, one especially given to us from St. Peter who would know all about the skill of casting. I imagine Peter with a net full of cares he is casting out on the sea of God’s love. Maybe it is a net of jellyfish that sting.

Is there any skill required to cast this net of cares?

It appears we cast because God cares for us. How does understanding God’s deep love for me help me to cast my cares?

Part of my work is letting go. Peter understood this as a fisherman. Herman Melville, in his cautionary novel, Moby Dick, gives us a perfect image of how anxiety and dread can generate an unhealthy desire to hunt down and master that dread ourselves. This can lead to obsession and ruin.

Captain Ahab can think of nothing other than killing the white whale, nothing else can entertain his time or attention. That is the price of holding on to our anxieties. They rob us of joy, presence, hope, and faith.

Do you have a net of anxieties that tangles your mind and heart? Do they wake you up at night? Do they gnaw at the edges of your thoughts?

This was my dad’s stage four cancer diagnosis. He was sometimes Captain Ahab fully consumed to try and hunt down cancer through the latest technology and harpoon those rogue cells.

As he learned to cast his cares on God, he rediscovered his joy, his purpose, his freedom from care.

“Cast your cares on Him because He cares for you.” – 1 Peter 5