The Backpack on the Bridge

In 2019, ultramarathon runner Courtney Dauwalter described the lowest moment of a 240-mile race through the Moab desert. Somewhere around mile 180, her vision blurring, legs seizing, she realized she had been gripping her water bottles so tightly that her fingers had gone white and numb. Her coach radioed in a single instruction: "Open your hands."

She did. And the bottles stayed — cradled in her palms rather than crushed in her fists. The grip had never been keeping them secure. It had only been costing her energy she desperately needed.

This is what anxiety does to the soul. We clutch our concerns with white-knuckled intensity, convinced that if we loosen our grip for even a moment, everything will shatter. The job. The diagnosis. The child who won't return our calls. We squeeze tighter, as though worry itself is a form of control — as though our vigilance is the only thing holding the world together.

But Peter, writing to scattered believers who had every earthly reason to panic, offers a strange command: cast. Throw. Hurl your anxiety onto the Almighty, because He cares for you. The Greek word for "cast" — epiripsantes — is violent, decisive. It is not a gentle setting down. It is a flinging away.

Your grip was never what held things together. His care was. Open your hands.