Morning Devotional

March 26, 2004

"Casting All Your Cares on Jesus" 

by Don Emmitte

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Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you. Be careful! Watch out for attacks from the Devil, your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for some victim to devour. Take a firm stand against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your Christian brothers and sisters all over the world are going through the same kind of suffering you are. (1 Peter 5:7-9 NLT).

While Mary was away I made a new discovery. I left the coffee pot on all day, and when I checked it after work, the remaining few cups of coffee had been reduced to a layer of tar in the bottom of the pot. It was black and sort of chewy-looking. That's when it hit me that I might have something. What if I peeled it off the bottom of the pot and cut it into strips? It looked like Coffee Jerky to me! Just think what this could mean to all those heavy eyed weekday commuters. Instead of sloshing scalding coffee in their laps and all over their nice leather seats, they could just pop out a hunk of coffee jerky. I'm thinking it would be a great way to make a pot of coffee last all day, too. It would take several hours just to get it all out of your teeth, just like real jerky!

I think I might really be on to something here. It would be great for all kinds of people. Think of people who work at jobs requiring a high level of alertness. They can’t be stopping to pour a cup of coffee all the time, so a strip of coffee jerky might be just the thing! And, it might even spurn off some other products. Since it really looks, feels, and tastes like tar, maybe it could be used as some new kind of glue. At least it would be relatively childproof since it would be edible, although it might keep them awake for a day or two!

Seriously, alertness is a good thing. That is the instruction of our reading this morning. We have an enemy who seeks our destruction. He is the devil. Now that might be a cause for concern if the first part of this instruction didn’t give us the answer. We are simply to give all our worries to God. Casting all your anxiety on Christ doesn't mean you have to slip into a vegetative state. It's when we surrender our troubles to him that we are truly freed to be alert to Christ-centered things, the things that count. It's better than anything caffeinated yet it won't keep you up at night. As a matter of fact, giving your anxieties over to Jesus is exactly what you need for a peaceful night's sleep.

I’m not going to be spending a lot of time perfecting the idea of Coffee Jerky. But, I do need to spend my time thinking about the things of Christ in my life. There is a direct correlation between the peace I feel and the surrender I practice. Give it a try and see if it won’t work for you too. Be alert and cast all your cares on Him!