Cast all your anxiety (merimna) on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7
The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries (merimna) of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. Matthew 13:22
Both of the above verses about worry or anxiety use the Greek word μέριμνα, transliterated merimna. J.D. Walt has this to say about this word:
"The word is transliterated 'merimna' and sounds like it spells. It carries a meaning of dividing and fracturing a person's being into parts. Anxiety, in a very literal sense, pulls us apart. It dis-integrates our very sense of self by attacking our core sense of security.
So how do we deal with anxiety?
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
Is it as simple as telling God what we are anxious about? It sounds good, but all too often when we are anxious we tend to worry our prayers rather than casting our anxiety on God. Anxiety must actually be displaced within us. The little word, 'because,' tells us how this displacement works. It brings us to the four most important words in today's text:
He cares for you.
Did you hear that?
He cares for you."
J.D. Walt https://seedbed.com/swing-thought-2/
Merimna means care, anxiety, "properly, a part, separated from the whole," "worry (anxiety), dividing and fracturing a person's being into parts." It dawned on me that it is the opposite of the "all" I wrote about recently – loving God with all. When we let our hearts and minds be pulled apart by worry into parts it separates us from God. We need to cast it all unto God and love-worship Him with all.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matthew 22:36-37).
The Greek word that Jesus used in quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, translated "all" three times in the verse, is holos (ὅλος). It is the root of the English term "whole." It means whole, complete, entire, "properly, wholly, where all the parts are present and working as a whole – i.e. as the total, which is greater than the mere sum of the parts."
Worry, then, is the opposite of this "all." Worry fractures me into parts separated from the whole. Loving the Lord with all – all the parts present and working as a whole – is the opposite of being fractured into parts by anxiety. Anxiety robs God of my all-love. It means I am reserving some of my love – worship - for that which I worry about. Do I really trust God whole-heartedly? Anxiety, as I've experienced lately, can become my default mode. But He cares for you.
The Greek word translated "cares" above is meló (μέλει) and means to be an object of care. I love that! "To be an object of care." As Louie Giglio says "you're on Heaven's radar." Even when we can't feel it or see it or hear it. Even when it seems we have been abandoned and forgotten.
A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.
Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care (meló) if we drown?" Mark 4:37-38
"Don't you care?"
How many times have I asked this question, roiling in my anguish and doubt? But he said he cares for me, and has demonstrated that love.
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares (meló) nothing for the sheep. John 10:11-13
So not being fractured, but being whole, means following the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for me. As Henry Nouwen wrote, it means trusting in God's love.
"It's a question here of trusting in God's love. The Greek word for faith is pistis, which means, literally, 'trust.' Whenever Jesus says to people he has healed: 'Your faith has saved you,' he is saying that they have found new life because they have surrendered in complete trust to the love of God revealed in him." -- Henry J.M. Nouwen
We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. 1 John 4:16 (NLT)
God wants me to be whole. I become whole following the Good Shepherd – trusting – loving with all, complete, entire, as one. Letting Him lead and guide me, bind up my wounds, rescue me, hold me close. Christ in me and I in Him, making it possible. His all, my all.
… Christ is all, and is in all. Colossians 3:11
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:4-6
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. John 17:22-23 (ESV)
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7
"Did you hear that?
He cares for you."
Photo, Fractured, by Brett Jordan https://flic.kr/p/8f8EHy
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