Cast Your Anxiety

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

1 Peter 5:7

This tree in our woods lost a huge branch during a storm in 2012.  I've pieced the two photos together but the photos were taken from different distances so you aren't getting the full impact of just how large this branch was.  It grew from near the base of the tree and extended out over the path.  You can see the rope the boys had tied to the branch more than 20 years before.  It had made a wonderful climbing tree from which to swing down onto the path.  The night it happened I remember hearing the enormous "CRACK" come from the woods during the storm.  The next morning we were astonished to make this discovery. . . .

You can see completely through the base of the tree!  We had no idea the tree was so unstable until the storm had revealed its weakness.

I like the adage that when you worry you suffer twice--the first time is before the thing you're worrying about happens and again when it does happen.  And if it doesn't happen, you've worried for no reason--so why worry at all!  Jesus has a lot to say about worrying in Matthew 6:25-34.  But as we all know it is easy to say "Don't Worry--Be Happy" and not so easy to do sometimes.  The only solution is to cast your anxiety onto Him.  The truth is worrying doesn't protect us.  There are hidden things--like the hole in the tree--that you will never know about until a "storm" blows through your life.  It is much better to prepare for the unknown by learning to trust God for all things--the things we see coming and the things we have no idea are about to show up.

Another wind storm blew through our woods the next year and twisted off another large branch.  Ken was able to get it unwedged from the crook in the tree before it split the tree in two!   Then he wrapped cables around the trunk.  So far, this has stabilized the tree.  Its one remaining large branch with its many limbs still towers over our woods. . . .

I am grateful that I can cast my anxieties onto God knowing that He is willing and able to give me all I need to weather the storms in my life.  He preserves me and watches over me until He takes me Home.