“Cast all your cares upon God, for he cares for you.” This New Testament exhortation found in the First Letter of Peter (5:7) concerning prayer keeps God in view. This distinguishes Christian prayer from those forms of meditation and mindfulness which do not. Now, this may seem obvious, and trivial to make such a statement. But keeping God in view, as we said in the preceding reflection, makes prayer a relational practice, not a magical or mechanical technique to get what we want.
God kept in view here, is trusted to be caring. Caring enough to handle our anxieties, so that we can enjoy the present moment, free from the corrosive effects of anxiety, and confident as we move into the future. This kind of prayer is humanizing. It’s a part of the Christian remedy against the woeful effects of anxiety. Anxieties take the joy out of life. They disturb our focus, lessen our productivity by dividing our energies, and fill us with fear. Our worries monster around in our minds. They gnaw at us. They make us deeply insecure. (And we know, or should know, that many features of contemporary culture play on our fears and anxieties, or are themselves the effects of anxieties!) Prayer that hands over our anxieties to God brings composure, it solidifies our lives, it redeems our days, one by one, if we begin our day with prayer and pray throughout the day, off-loading our cares on God.
We’ll never know that God is trustworthy unless we actually begin to trust God with our cares, large and small. That is, the efficacy of prayer is not something that can be proved once and for all by a rational argument. So wise guides in these matters often rightly say the very first thing to do is….to begin praying! Still, we can be schooled in praying so that we grow in our prayer life.
Listen to these oft-quoted words from C.S. Lewis about where, and how, growth in the Christian really happens:
“It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”