The waiting morning

It's five o'clock, and I am restlessly awake. My full body scan is scheduled for 9 a.m. Even though I won't know the results for a week, the scan looms large. An hour of images taken, the slow slide underneath the counter, just inches from my nose. The gray little woman who always brings me back to the hot room where the equipment whirs and I must lie still for that whole hour.

Just as He knows every hair on my aching head, knows the painful places sickened by the radiation and the shots that reverse my thyroid hormones, He knows the results already of this scan day. He knows whether I will get that magical pronouncement, "no visible metastasis". He knows. I can rest in the waiting, because He already knows.

...the exhortation was a vital part of a passage dealing with Christians who were suffering (I Peter 4:12-19). Peter referred to those who suffer according to the will of God (4:19). The sovereign God had allowed severe trials to come to those believers in accordance with His own wise and perfect will. Therefore, they were urged to commit the keeping of their souls to him. That means they could entrust the safety and security of their souls to God, their faithful Creator. When we come to verse 7 of chapter 5, it is apparent that their suffering was causing them some anxiety. They were beginning to worry. The word care in Greek is merimna, meaning anxiety, or a fearful and painful uneasiness of the mind. It is the crippling sin of worry that our Lord said chokes the Word so that it becomes unfruitful (Matthew 13:22). In my crisis hour, I certainly did not want to cut off the message and ministry of God's Word. That would have brought me a shameful defeat. Paul had used the same word in its verb form when he wrote, Be careful for nothing (Philippians 4:6). He tells us not to worry about anything, for anxiety comes from not trusting God. Like Martha, at times we are careful and troubled about many things (Luke 10:41) when we should be anxious for nothing. Nothing means not even one thing! Peter told us what we are to do with all of our anxieties. We are to cast them upon our Lord. Casting all your care upon Him. The Greek word for cast is ballo, which means to deposit with or to commit. While it is not the same word translated commit in 1 Peter 4:19, it does contain the same thought. We are to take our painful anxieties and hurl them--all of them--on the Lord. (Lehmann Strauss)