Cast and Care

There’s nothing like a milestone birthday to make you examine your life and the choices you’ve made in it. That’s what happened to me recently. I had one of those birthdays with a zero at the end. The kind of birthday to which my son might say ‘double digits’ but in my case, he’d mean it ironically and we’d laugh. I’ve been in the double digits for decades now, far too long for the doubling to feel special, but not so long that a number ending in zero doesn’t feel both special and slightly terrifying. there is something about a number ending in ‘0’ to make you take stock. Size things up, mostly, your own life.

Of course, taking stock of your life doesn’t happen on milestone birthdays. It could come as a result of a confluence of any number of events, favourable or unfavourable. Sometimes it’s simply from a string of seemingly unconnected happenings that, together, gather to a weight that feels like pressure, nothing stress and strain, milestone birthdays or no. 

For me, it’s in moments when there is pressure and strain in enough areas of life, when there is what feels like an ample serving of difficulty, I have a tendency to ask God – what are you doing? 

In some ways, you might say that the question is a perfectly reasonable one. You might even say that it’s a good question, I am talking to God, after all. I’m asking him what he’s doing, rather than taking out my frustrations on myself or others. 

But in the question, what are you doing? I think there might be a problem in it, or at least in the way that I ask it. For, when I frame it as I do, I think I am actually casting myself as a passive, inert bystander, and God as the agent of strain and pressure. A negative force. A source of friction for me and my ways. 

Is this what I mean by the question? Not exactly, but there is that within it, I suppose.

A frequent response to hard times is to look for the cause of that difficulty. If a cause can be found, then perhaps it can be removed, the way you might hunt down a splinter in your skin with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers. But wanting to remove a difficulty doesn’t usually resolve it, or make it any lighter or easier. And in the end, just trying to remove it, erase it, obliterate it, isn’t that productive in the long run. Someone usually has to bear it, and ignoring it usually means the thing that’s weighing you down comes straight back to your own shoulders if it’s not dealt with. 

And so, the problem of the hard thing remains.

Which is very unsatisfying when you want to do something with it. 

Verses like: 1 Peter 5:7 remind me there is something I can do.

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

I’ve read these words many times, and I think I’ve always read it as a kind of civilised setting down, at most, a hesitant lob, like a delicate landing of a fishing line into the water, or as the soft underhand throw of a ball in a game of catch where you’re not quite sure if the person you’re throwing to will be able to catch it. 

That’s the kind of hesitancy you might use when you teach a small child to catch a ball when you’re the one who knows the most about spheres, weights, and velocity. But, when the pressures of life seem to be firing on all cylinders, is that the time to be playing catch with someone you’re not quite sure can catch what you’re casting? Is that the kind of being God is? Small, slightly uncoordinated, willing to learn, but just not quite getting it and needing your time and attention to teach him? If so, I don’t think I’d trust such a being with my cares no matter how warm the invitation. 

Is this what that verse is talking about? 

Is this what God is like?

If you look up the meaning of the word ‘cast’, you will find much more than a gentle lob. You actually find an action of much more force.

The English word ‘cast’ has its origins in a 13th-century Scandinavian word meaning “throw, throw violently, fling, hurl.” 

The original word used in verse … spirit ….  is a compound of two words: epi, meaning ‘on top of or upon’ and crypto, which means ‘to hurl, throw or cast’. 

It’s a bit unfortunate that the translators chose ‘cast’ when we could have had hurl all along. 

Hurl all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 

Doesn’t this sound like a more satisfying activity? 

Why sit idly by when the worries come, we can pour our energy into throwing them God’s way with as much strength, force as we can muster.

Why tamely play catch with God when you could enter the Highland games?

Highland games take place every year around Scotland. In fact, they happen regularly in a number of countries around the globe, wherever Scottish people have taken them. 

These games involve track and field events, piping (as in bagpiping) and Highland dancing. They also include what are called ‘heavy events’, the sheaf toss, the stone put, the hammer throw, weight for height, weight for distance, and tossing the caber. 

Whatever else the Highland games are, a festival or entertainment, at its heart, it is a showcase of the many ways to throw heavy things. 

In the sheaf toss, you have to throw a heavy burlap bag filled with straw with a pitchfork over a raised bar. 

Stone put is a bit like shot put, but with a 26-pound river stone instead of a ball.

In the Highland games version of hammer throw a heavy metal ball attached to wooden pole is whirled and then launched from an overhead position. 

In weight for height and distance, as you’d expect the throw highest or longest, respectively, wins the prize. 

The caber toss, however, takes the prize in my mind for the strangest heavy event. In this game, those competing must toss a tall pole between 5-6 metres high. It’s basically the trunk of a tree. And the tree or caber must be ‘tossed’ or rather hurled ideally so that it falls end over end, away from the one throwing it. Were you thinking that the person who throws their caber end over end the farthest wins? Sorry. You’d be wrong. It’s the straightest throw that wins the prize.

Why? I have no idea. But you have to admit that the Highland games is creative when it comes to finding a myriad of ways to hurl something.  

And I suppose it’s the range of approaches regarding heavy things that reminds me that to cast cares on the Lord is anything but passive

Reading the verse in context, there’s a string of other verbs to engage in:

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Hurl all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lio,n looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

There are so many things to do in these verses a… Highland games of relating to God.

And there’s a return – you don’t hurl your cares, or humble yourself or stay alert or resist the devil in a vacuum.

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.”

 Part of the casting, the throwing, hurling to God all our worries and cares is communicating with him. Hearing from him through his word, and speaking to him in prayer. 

The Lord is doing his will in our lives, and he invites us to take part in his work, by trusting him, relying on him, loving him, and hurling to him the stresses and strains that come our way.

Sometimes my youngest daughter runs up behind me when I’m working or reading. She falls on my back, and wraps her arms around me. What are you doing, Mum? She asks. 

In that moment, I bear all her weight. And to bear her weight? This is the joy for me. The fact that she asks me that. The fact that she trusts me enough to throw her self on me. 

Maybe that is the way I should ask God what he’s up to. Milestone birthday or no. Throw the weight of all my cares on him. Throw the weight of my whole life on him and ask him. With the arms of my heart around his. What are you doing, Lord?