1 Peter 5:7 calls us to cast all your care upon Him, for He cares for you (NKJV‬‬). It’s often doled out to anxious Christians like it’s sanctified Xanax.

This Scripture salve has been used to treat everything from pre-test jitters to full-on panic disorders.

And often, there’s an element of spiritual bypassing baked into admonition to heed this Scripture. That is, you are actually being told to distance yourself from the emotions you are actually feeling.

Anxiety is a sign of deficient faith, we are told.

Essentially, when someone quotes this passage at us, they are often slick suggesting that real Christians don’t worry, don’t complain, and certainly don’t ever have a panic attack while driving on the I-5 in Stockton, CA on a Thursday afternoon.

Cast all your cares upon Him too often becomes the churchly equivalent to, Just walk it off.

Now, there’s a quick and easy remedy to this rather blithe way of (ab)using the passage, found in the Greek syntax, and in the larger context. I’ll get to that before we’re done.

But before we go there, it has occurred to me that we might need to reimagine what casting all our cares on the Lord looks like.

I don’t know if this is how it’s always intended to come across, but the way cast all your cares on Him often registers is like you’re supposed to have this cathartic moment where you actually cast all your cares upon the Lord.

Like it’s possible to have this grand event where you take every bit of negative juju—from complex trauma to your bad hair day; hand it off to God, all boxed up; and come away with an enduring sense of equanimity.

Casting all your cares upon Him becomes an exercise in letting go and letting God; or letting Jesus take the wheel.

But does that actually look anything like what we’re being told to do in this passage?

The short answer is: No. The more involved answer is this: The Bible has this holy, faithful, God-honoring literary category called lament.

Much of the book of Job qualifies as lament. And then you have this whole book called Lamentatations.

After a series of tragedies, Job cursed the day of his birth, and indeed, begged God to retroactively erase the date of his conception (Job 3). In Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah actually accused God of using him for target practice: He strung his bow and set me as the target for his arrow. He pierced my kidneys with shafts from his quiver (Lamentations‬ ‭3‬:‭12‬-‭13‬ ‭CSB‬‬).

Lament is the full-throated complaints of confused, anxious, grieving, enraged saints—people none would dare accuse of lacking faith. They are full of cares and anxieties and worries.

But here’s the important thing to understand about lament: the distressed saints of old weren’t descending into an internal doom spiral. Biblical lament isn’t a case of the old cope-and-seethe.

Rather, a lament is a prayer.

Let me repeat that: A lament is a prayer.

These saints had troubles. They had worries. They had cares. And they took them to the Lord.

Sounds to me like they were … wait a minute … ah, yes, there it is: casting their cares upon Him.

Not with equanimity. Not with a whimper, but with a bang.

They didn’t graciously hand over their burdens and struggles, their worries and fears, to God with a sheepish apology for their lack of faith. Oh, silly me!

No, whenever you read a biblical lament, it comes off more like they’re hurling the shards of their lives at God, begging Him to do something about this.

That still counts as casting all your cares upon Him, doesn’t it?

The place in Scripture where you find the highest concentration of lament is in the Psalms. Sixty-five of the 150 Psalms (so about 43%) are Psalms of lament. And the Psalms are the first and greatest prayer book and hymnal of Christ and His Church. So maybe—just maybe—God put them there to show us what it looks like to cast our burdens on Him.

It doesn’t have to be pretty.

Here’s a fun fact: When Peter wrote the words, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you; he was actually citing one of the Psalms of lament!

Now that’s interesting!

The passage in question is Psalm 55:22: Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you (NKJV‬‬).

You’re probably thinking: Okay, I see he was quoting the Psalm; but that doesn’t sound like the way you described a biblical lament.

Well, look how the Psalm begins:

Give ear to my prayer, O God,

And do not hide Yourself from my supplication.

Attend to me, and hear me; I am restless in my complaint, and moan noisily,

Because of the voice of the enemy,

Because of the oppression of the wicked;

For they bring down trouble upon me,

And in wrath they hate me.

My heart is severely pained within me,

And the terrors of death have fallen upon me.

Fearfulness and trembling have come upon me,

And horror has overwhelmed me.

Psalm 55‬:‭1‬-‭5‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

You see, biblical laments begin with a litany of cares; but almost always end with the Psalmist reaffirming his faith in God’s care for him. The lone exception I can think of is Psalm 88, which comes to a rather abrupt and totally goth conclusion: You have distanced loved one and neighbor from me; darkness is my only friend (Psalm 88‬:‭18‬ ‭CSB‬‬).

In other words, a biblical lament begins with casting our cares upon the Lord; and ends with the realization that He cares for us.

Indeed, lament is only possible because God cares for us. If we didn’t believe He cared, we wouldn’t cast the debris of our shattered hopes, dreams, and lives at His feet and wail at Him to fix it.

TL;DR: The laments we find in Scripture show us what 1 Peter 5:7 might actually look like in practice.

Now, I also promised you that I would show you how the syntax and context of the call to cast all your care upon Him will clear up overly-chipper, less-than-empathetic uses of the passage. Well, here goes, backing up to v6.

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

1 Peter‬ ‭5‬:‭6‬-‭7‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

First of all, casting all your care is not the main verb. It’s not even technically a command; it’s a participle.

The main verb—and the actual command—is to humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. Humbling ourselves involves understanding who God is, and who we are.

We are God’s beloved sons and daughters, for whom Jesus has died; who are sealed by the Holy Spirit, and to whom God has promised to work all things—even those things that burden and trouble us—together for His glory and our good.

God is the eternal, infinite, unchanging, inviolable, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the universe, perfect in His justice, holiness, goodness, and steadfast love.

We are told to humble ourselves under His mighty hand. That is—to trust His power and His promises and His providence; rather than trusting in our own power and efforts.

We do this—take refuge under His mighty hand—by casting all our care upon Him. This means that as we have cares, we give them to Him. And at times, it may look like the laments of the old time saints.

This instruction to humble ourselves under His mighty hand, by casting our cares on Him; is sweetened with two blessed assurances. First, that He will exalt us in due time. By the way, ultimately that’s picturing the resurrection and final judgment, where our perseverance in faith will be rewarded with eternal life in God’s presence. Second, we are assured that He cares for us. Again, this is the very reason that we can cast our burdens upon Him. We belong to Him, and He cares for us.