Day 4 - Week 40 - Psalm 55:22 "Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will support you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken."

I have spent the past two nights both readying for and recovering from our annual Thanksgiving feast, always held at our home.  This year there were 25 family members here, and it is always a wonderful time of family, food and fun.  But invariably, I always end up getting rattled about the last 30 minutes of food preparation, trying to get everything ready to be served hot at the same time, and there's always some last minute catastrophe...or so it seems...that shakes me up!  My goal next year is to stay completely calm throughout the entire process...can it be done?  (Yes it can!  I just need to remember to pray for an extra dose of calmness next year.) 

When the food is served, and people are happy and well fed, and the conversations are flying across the multiple tables, then my anxiety is completely erased, my heart is happy and I am always so glad to be able to have accomplished this feat one more year!

This actually ties in well with this week's verse..."Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will support you..."  I felt burdened in my preparations and when I burned my beautiful (or it was going to be beautiful) cake on Thanksgiving morning, I felt an extra burden.  In a much deeper way, I feel burdened in my concerns for my children and grandchildren.  I feel burdened when I see the slide in the morality of society and worry about the future world that my grandchildren will live in.  I feel burdened by my concern for Christians around the world who are tortured for their faith, and I feel burdened by my less-than-passionate faith in the face of their suffering.

Fact of the matter is, there are many things in this life that cause us to feel burdened, stressed and under pressure.  But our Lord, our good and gracious God, says, "Cast your burden on Me, I will support you."  There's the promise...He will support us when we throw the burdens off of our back and confidently give them to Him.  Our tendency, sadly, is to hold on to our burdens, claiming them as our own and clinging to them in some masochistic manner, while all the time God is ready and waiting to unload those aching backs of ours that are trying so desperately to bear up.

Georg Neumark wrote a German hymn hundreds of years ago that expresses the sentiment of this verse so beautifully,

If thou but suffer God to guide thee, and hope in God through all thy ways, He'll give thee strength, whate'er betide thee, and bear thee through the evil days. Who trusts in God's unchanging love builds on the rock that naught can move.

"Whate'er betide thee" today, tomorrow, or in the years to come...trust in God's unchanging love. He has promised to support you as you cast your burdens on Him.  Never doubt His capability to bear up under the weight...He is able.