When surrender still has a retrieval plan
Have you ever fallen victim to the old “money on a string” trick? A prankster attaches a thin fishing line to a twenty-dollar bill and drops the money on a path while holding on to the line. Hiding behind a tree or a mailbox, the jokester then lies in wait for a victim who spots the free cash and bends down to grab it. At just the right moment, the string is tugged, and the victim is caught off-balance.
Many believers place a similar string on the burdens they bring to the Cross. We surrender something to God but keep hold of the other end of the string, just in case. We want to keep our options open, ready to pull those worries back if we change our minds.
It takes an enormous amount of trust to surrender our burdens to God, but Jesus is entirely trustworthy. He wants to heal the wounds of our past. He promises to meet us in our present needs, and He already knows what awaits us in the future. God knows the people we carry in our hearts, and His love for them is perfect. He knows the desires of our hearts, and He invites us to rest in His care.
But we can’t fully enter into that rest while continually taking back what we have entrusted to Him. We can surrender our burdens and then reclaim them five minutes later. I suspect most of us have done exactly that.
Henry Ward Beecher put it rather pointedly:
“Men do not avail themselves of the riches of God’s grace. They love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret as an old friar would be without his hair girdle. They are commanded to cast their cares upon the Lord, but even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch them up again, and think it meritorious to walk burdened.”
— Henry Ward Beecher
Scripture gives us this invitation more than once:
Psalm 55:22 — “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.”
1 Peter 5:6–7 — “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”
There is something quite deliberate about the word cast. We aren’t merely invited to gingerly place our burdens before God while keeping one hand on them. We are invited to throw them onto Him because He cares for us.
When reading these passages, I saw in my mind’s eye an enormous archery target on a wall. It was made of industrial-strength Velcro. Instead of a bullseye, there was a cross in the centre.
A few yards away from the target was a basket full of balls, also covered in Velcro. Those balls represented our cares.
We are invited to hurl those cares at the Cross with the force of an All-Star pitcher and then step back, realising that those cares are now stuck there. With considerable and deliberate effort, we could probably peel those balls off again.
But why would we?
Think about the cares that immediately came to mind when you read Psalm 55:22 and 1 Peter 5:6–7. Perhaps you can picture yourself writing each one on a ball from that basket.
Now picture yourself picking them up, one by one, and hurling them at the Cross.
You have a choice. You can walk over and start peeling them off again, or you can leave them there, where they belong.
And if you discover there is still a string attached to one of them?
Drop the string.
Until next time,
