Give your worries to the Lord, and he will take care of you. He will never let good people down.

Psalm 55:22

Imagine holding a rock in your hand, high above your head. That rock might weigh 1 pound, 3 pounds, or even 5 pounds, but the weight of it doesn’t really matter. What matters is how long you hold it there. Holding that rock in the air for a minute isn’t a problem. Holding it for 2 minutes isn’t difficult. But holding it, even if it is a small, insignificant size for 30 minutes, an hour, even 2 hours, would become a significant burden. It would make your hand ache, your arm and shoulder cramp up. It would feel heavier and heavier the longer it was held.

The same is true with our worries and fears. If they come into our thoughts and we hold them for a minute or two, it won’t feel like much of a struggle. But if we hold them for hours, or even for days or weeks, we definitely feel the weight of these burdens, and they will cause significant pain in our lives. The longer we hold them, the heavier they feel.

Sometimes we need those heavy burdens in our lives to remind us to lighten our load. They teach us just how weak our arms really are, how difficult it can be to hold our worries up higher than our joys and bear their weight alone. They remind us to place our worries and our burdens in God’s powerful and capable arms. Without the struggles, we cling to our independence, we strive for self-sufficiency. But we aren’t meant to carry a single one of our burdens alone. God invites us to hand them over, to release them to Him. 

Rather than holding all those worries and focusing on what you can’t do, give them to God and trust what He CAN do! Hand them over and whisper a prayer asking Jesus to carry them for you. When you replace your heavy worries with humble prayers, your worry habit becomes a prayer habit. And prayers feel as light as air. You are loved!