I head out to the end of my pier on a laser-focused mission. Fishing! I bring 2 ultralight rods and reels. A small fanny-pack bait bag. A net and a beverage. I settle in on my pier bench, bait up and steel myself for a cat-and-mouse game with my wily foes. With persistent practiced precision, I cast my weighted bobber and plastic-tipped jig to the very edge of the wild rice. The very edge. Or, even better, a smidgen inside the rice’s edge. For there, lurk the puny perch of dreams. And slab bluegills, a few crappies, an occasional bass or a Northern Pike. But their prowling range seems to span only a very narrow band of territory—right on the edge of the rice. Cast into the open water—say 2 feet or so outside of the rice? You might as well take a nap or read a few articles on your Wall Street Journal app on your smartphone. You won’t get a bite, not even a nibble.
But this time, after another perfectly-placed precision positioning of my plastic on the rice’s edge, a predator puny perch manages to abscond with my bait. So I need to reel in. Then I bait up, and with practiced precision I cast. . .right into the rice. This time I’m snagged. Badly. There’s no freeing my hook without breaking the line.
Being too cheap to accept that option, I hike back up to the house and gear up for a bait-hook-bobber search and rescue mission. After donning swim trunks and surf shoes, I crawl off my pier and wade out to the rice to loosen my hook from the stubborn stalk of rice. In the process I succeed in spooking all the fish in my zip code. Bummer.
But that’s fishing. Casting, retrieving, and sometimes snags.
However, that’s not praying! Yet I fear that for too many years that’s how I treated a Bible passage that is meant to bring us nothing but comfort. “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7) The word that snagged me is “cast.” So that’s what I did with my problems. With practiced precision I cast my problems to the Lord in my prayers. Again and again I cast them to him. And again and again and again, I retrieved them and got snagged by them.
How? All-too-often I didn’t leave my problem in the Lord’s hands. Instead my mind retrieved it, replayed it, and fretted over every possible this-could-go-wrong facet of it. No wonder my blood pressure spiked, my back tightened into a knot, and I tossed and turned at night.
But Peter isn’t comparing praying to fishing, even though Peter’s resume included “professional fisherman” on the Sea of Galilee. Instead, the Greek word most of our English translations render as “cast” is built on this basic idea: “to place a saddle cloth on a riding animal.” Doesn’t that change our prayer picture dramatically? Our Lord tells us to take our trials, temptations, worries, and anxieties, walk over to the nearest horse or donkey and with a flick of our wrist transfer the whole burden onto the animal’s back. That’s where we leave them.
By now your scratching your head and wondering, “How in the world do I do this?” I don’t own a horse, a donkey, not so much as a Shetland pony. And even if I did, I don’t see how this would help in my prayer life!” Well, it probably wouldn’t. But I find it fascinating that our Savior Jesus used a very similar illustration when he said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30) The yoke bound two oxen, two work-animals together. And Jesus wants us to be yoked to him by faith. Once we are, we can be confident that that Jesus is always right beside us, and he’s doing all the heavy-lifting in our lives. He carries all our anxiety, our weariness, our heart-aches, our setbacks, our failures, our burdens. The worst one of all? The crushing weight of our sin.
Because I know Jesus is pulling with me, for me, and more often than not instead of me, I know he’s always eager to have me “place my prayers on him like a saddle cloth.” There I leave them, snags and all.
Because you see, praying is not like fishing.
Privileged to Serve,
Rev. Glenn Schwanke
But this time, after another perfectly-placed precision positioning of my plastic on the rice’s edge, a predator puny perch manages to abscond with my bait. So I need to reel in. Then I bait up, and with practiced precision I cast. . .right into the rice. This time I’m snagged. Badly. There’s no freeing my hook without breaking the line.
Being too cheap to accept that option, I hike back up to the house and gear up for a bait-hook-bobber search and rescue mission. After donning swim trunks and surf shoes, I crawl off my pier and wade out to the rice to loosen my hook from the stubborn stalk of rice. In the process I succeed in spooking all the fish in my zip code. Bummer.
But that’s fishing. Casting, retrieving, and sometimes snags.
However, that’s not praying! Yet I fear that for too many years that’s how I treated a Bible passage that is meant to bring us nothing but comfort. “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7) The word that snagged me is “cast.” So that’s what I did with my problems. With practiced precision I cast my problems to the Lord in my prayers. Again and again I cast them to him. And again and again and again, I retrieved them and got snagged by them.
How? All-too-often I didn’t leave my problem in the Lord’s hands. Instead my mind retrieved it, replayed it, and fretted over every possible this-could-go-wrong facet of it. No wonder my blood pressure spiked, my back tightened into a knot, and I tossed and turned at night.
But Peter isn’t comparing praying to fishing, even though Peter’s resume included “professional fisherman” on the Sea of Galilee. Instead, the Greek word most of our English translations render as “cast” is built on this basic idea: “to place a saddle cloth on a riding animal.” Doesn’t that change our prayer picture dramatically? Our Lord tells us to take our trials, temptations, worries, and anxieties, walk over to the nearest horse or donkey and with a flick of our wrist transfer the whole burden onto the animal’s back. That’s where we leave them.
By now your scratching your head and wondering, “How in the world do I do this?” I don’t own a horse, a donkey, not so much as a Shetland pony. And even if I did, I don’t see how this would help in my prayer life!” Well, it probably wouldn’t. But I find it fascinating that our Savior Jesus used a very similar illustration when he said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30) The yoke bound two oxen, two work-animals together. And Jesus wants us to be yoked to him by faith. Once we are, we can be confident that that Jesus is always right beside us, and he’s doing all the heavy-lifting in our lives. He carries all our anxiety, our weariness, our heart-aches, our setbacks, our failures, our burdens. The worst one of all? The crushing weight of our sin.
Because I know Jesus is pulling with me, for me, and more often than not instead of me, I know he’s always eager to have me “place my prayers on him like a saddle cloth.” There I leave them, snags and all.
Because you see, praying is not like fishing.
Privileged to Serve,
Rev. Glenn Schwanke
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