Sorrows are killers of happiness number 1. They automatically darken our view, push themselves to the centre of our thoughts, our world. If we want to shoo them away like flies, they will come back for sure. It will be hard to notice beauty with sorrows in our heart. Art of life seems light-years away from us. The way the bible and Jesus talked about sorrows, they are not entitled to stay in our life.

Attention: In German, the same word “sorgen” is used in the sense of “to care for” and in the sense of “to worry”. The Greek word for “sorgen” in the New Testament has the same ambiguity.“Sorge” in the negative sense is the fear that something will happen one doesn’t want to happen. This fear prevents from approaching the problem hopefully. We have to confront this kind of sorrows while the responsible taking care or providing absolutely might be a part of us.

Our fearful anxiety is opposed to the word of the bible:
“Do not be anxious about anything…” (Philippians 4, 6), “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5,7).
It is easy to say, “cast this sorrow on Jesus”, but how does it work?

Worries, fears, and anxieties play the main part, it is not only about an unemotional problem solving. To recognize and to accept “Yes, I am worried, sorrows worry, depress or scare me” can be the first step for God being able to turn those fearful sorrows into tasks! Once I realized that I am worried, I can let Jesus’ word challenge me not to worry and to start “fighting” against those sorrows. I can then also check to what extent this sorrow is real. However, it might often not be easy to estimate whether or not a cause is a reason for justified sorrows.

When the accident in the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl happened years ago, it was difficult to decide whether that gave a sufficient reason for not eating salad. The French on the one side of the Rhine enjoyed their salad contrary to their neighbours on the German side who mostly abstained from it.

Even though individual differences, why I am worried about something and somebody else is not, may absolutely exist, it is still helpful to compare my sorrows to the reaction of others or to ask advice and to thereby make my sorrow accessible to examination. Maybe I just have wrong or faulty information?

Each day has enough sorrow of its own.

Many sorrows are sorrows about the future. According to the word of Jesus that each day has enough trouble of its own we should learn to separate between the future and the current sorrows – if the latter are then still left.

Who really knows the future?  There are so many things that might change “until then”! Let’s think back to the time 10 years ago: Did we imagine back then our life, our relations, our family, our tasks, yes, our society the way we are experiencing them today?
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6, 34)

What scares me? What do I fear to happen?
When we call the fears what they are we can catch hold of them. An example: If I worry about my child reaching the required standard in school and then detect the fear that thereby the professional possibilities will be limited later, the sorrow changes and might disappear because I realize that this fear is not justified for the repetition of a year can even be beneficial. However, in my “soul-searching” I could also come across the fear that I have to be ashamed in front of relatives or neighbours. Or my sorrow is based upon the fear that my child will not handle this failure well and won’t have any confidence in himself in the future.

Are those fears justified? Will they really occur? And if so, is that really that bad? It is worth picturing how it will be when my fears actually become real. Could I live with it? And if not, why is it so difficult for me? Which of the things I demand of life, of myself, of my child and/or God would I have to let go?

No matter whether the fear disappeared or makes itself noticeable only to some extent, we can now call it what it is and bring it to God. We caught hold of it!
This prayer – don’t mistake it – is about my own fears not the sorrow itself.

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5,7). This word of God has two parts, what we shall do and then why we shall do it.

We shall cast our sorrows on Him, on God. But when I cast something I do not keep it in my hand anymore and it moves away, at least a little bit, gets out of reach, I separate from it. I cannot touch it immediately afterwards. I let got and put the sorrow in God’s hand: “Please, Lord, take care.”

Much more important than this process is the second part, why we shall cast our sorrows: “because he cares for you.” God worries about us. We are close to His heart. It is about our trust in God. Our image of God will be reflected in our way of worrying. Let’s pray for a personal revelation of God as the caring father in heaven, but let’s also pray that we can trust Him as the almighty God for whom nothing is impossible.

Once we took the first four steps, the sorrows should have left us: The former sorrow turned into a task we now approach with God’s help by looking for His solutions. Thereby, in particular the next step, as small as it might be, is of importance that can pervade everything like sourdough, that puts everything in a different light afterwards such that the next step becomes visible etc. Now, we are also able to perceive the beauties of life again.

The process of forgetting to anxiously worry does not follow a fixed program. The steps 1-5 are not to be misunderstood. One can experience that each of the previous steps alone is enough that the fear disappears from the sorrows. And, finally, I learn to resist the fearful sorrow and to grow into a lifestyle of calmness in a rhythm of letting go or giving away and real taking care and providing.

Like this it could also become understandable that it is possible to fold sorrows almost playfully into paper aeroplanes – they do not have a right to reality – and to then send those paper aeroplanes towards heaven.

• Make a paper aeroplane und write the lines from 1 Peter 5,7 on it. Put this aeroplane on an eye-catching place for the daily personal memory.
• Pray for being able to realize and to trust in God’s caring fatherhood and his almightiness more and more.
  

"How easy would life be if the unnecessary sorrows could be distinguished from the real ones!“
(Karl Heinrich Waggerl)

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (Paul)