A Prayer in Praise of God’s Care
Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Pet. 5:7)
Loving Father, it’s incredibly comforting to begin this day remembering how much you care for your children. This is always good news to me, but especially this week. The combination of what I’ve taken on plus the burdens that have been laid at my feet are way too much for me to carry. I need your kind heart and broad shoulders.
So by faith, right now, with palms up, I cast my cares upon you, gracious Father. Carry my burdens for the people I love— dear friends I so wish I could change. Sometimes I foolishly think if you’d only let me be the fourth member of the Trinity for fifteen minutes, I could do a lot of good in the lives of a lot of people. What arrogance! You haven’t called me to fix anyone but to love as Jesus loves me. You haven’t called me to live with indifference but to live with deference to you. You are God and I am so very not.
Receive my anxieties about living in a world with a broken economy, the ongoing threat of terror, and the increase of diseases, even things like the swine flu. Father, I cannot add one minute to my life through worry. In fact, I can take a lot away from my life through trying to carry burdens you alone can carry. Turn my “What ifs?” into “Now that’s”—now that Jesus has risen from the dead, everything has changed. You’ve numbered my hairs and my days.
You have the hearts of every king in your hand. Nothing catches you off guard or by surprise. There are no wrinkles in your brow and there’s no second-guessing in your courts. You give and you take away— blessed be your name, O Lord.
Whenever I am tempted to doubt your burden-bearing care, may Jesus’ cross loom large in my gaze. For it was there, Lord, where you bore the greatest of all my burdens— my sin— and demonstrated the incomparable extent of your care. I pray in Jesus’ matchless name.
Amen.