April, 2009
Casting all your cares upon him.
What comes to mind when we think about cares?
Is it not usually things like health problems that beset us or friends or family members?
Or the loss of a job or the breakdown of the car and we do not have the funds for the repairs?
All these are very legitimate cares to pray about.
But what about sins and habits that we have struggled with for a long time and there seems to be no relief?
Those are also very legitimate cares, but those are usually much more private and most of us would certainly not spell them out and ask others for prayer.
The shame we so often feel prevents us from even admitting the problem to ourselves.
Just for all this I Peter 5:7 was written, possibly even more so than for health or family problems.
What compounds these problems is that often we have asked God to help us overcome some particular sin and that seemed as fruitless as promises and commitments on our part to do better from now on.
Not only is the sin itself a care, often the frustation of not being able to overcome is an even greater care.
Just recently a dear Christian friend told me on a Monday that her pastor the day before had told his flock that they should put away un-forgiveness, anger, jealousy and all the other sins that trouble us. But that they should practice love, joy, peace, kindness, patience and all the other good things that work well while you are in church, but are really hard to achieve in the rest of the week.
All that is not at all un-familiar with me, I have heard the same many a time.
During that conversation it suddenly occurred to me that the things we are being asked to put away, is something akin to what we would do with our kitchen waste.
“Put it away”, we are are told and we put it away in a closet upstairs and close the door.
That smelly stuff is now out of sight, but it is still in the house.
And when we reach in the same closet next morning for a clean shirt, we are again confronted with that which we put away yesterday. And the longer we leave it there the worse the condition becomes, even our clothes begin to smell like the stuff we “put away”.
This all is sort of what happens when we try to improve our lives to become “better” Christians. Even our prayers for God’s help go un-answered, and for good reason.
Which one of us would like to help his own children to hide such a mess in their closets?
Any one of us would tell our children to get rid of it once and for all.
Where? To the curb where the garbageman will pick it up and you will never see it again.
That is where Jesus comes in. He is like the garbageman who picks up whatever we let him have.
When we decide to “recycle” our own waste material, he will allow us to try it until we give up on the effort.
“When we confess our sin (all sin), he is faithful to forgive (all our sin) and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
He has never even suggested that we clean up our own act, let alone that he expects us, by our own efforts to attain a greater degree of righteousness.
So why would he help us to try and recycle our own dirt, it would take that much longer for us to give up trying to do things our own way.
It is his love for us that prevents him from helping us.
Casting all your cares upon him…….
There is nothing genle about casting, it is like throwing your cares at him and that is just fine with him.
Why?
Because he cares for you, I Peter 5:7b.
Self-improvement does not work for God’s people, not in the long run.
For a time our willpower may seem to do the trick, until we become painfully aware that we failed again.
How do we overcome sin? By casting it at his feet: here Lord, you get rid of it, I am sick and tired of a stinking closet.
In John 1:9 we learn that he (God) will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
All that is required of us is that we go to him, tell him the whole sordid story and he will do the rest.
The tragedy is that so many Christian’s closets contain so much that should have gone to the Holy Garbageman a long time ago.
Blessed are those children of God who are advised to take their sins to the Holy Garbageman, rather than just putting them away.
O yes, this same Holy Garbageman is also the one who will fill our heart with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and all the other good things we long for.
Because he embodies all those good things in us, he is our very Life, Gal. 2:20.
He is the mystery among the gentiles,(you and me), Christ in you, the hope of glory, Colossians 1:27.
He is our Life in us, he is love in us, he is patience in us, etc. He and his resources are never far away, because he is in us. He and his resources are at our disposal at a moment’s notice, always.
Casting all our cares on him, because he cares so deeply for us.
St.Thomas, April ’09. Simon VanderKooy.
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