"All of you, clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, because, 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you" (1 Pet. 5:5-7 NIV).

The last two sentences are all one in the Greek so the above translation loses something important. Humbling ourselves under God's mighty hand is being linked with casting all our anxiety on him. We are being commanded to do both at the same time. This means that "proper humility is attained by casting all our anxieties on him" (Wayne Gruden). This is new to me.

Grudem goes on to say: "Peter recognizes that a great barrier to putting others first and thinking of them as more important is the legitimate human concern 'But who then will care for me?' The answer is that God himself will care for our needs. He is able to do so far better than we are. His hand is mighty. And he wants to do so, for he continually cares for his children. Therefore casting all our anxieties on him (our cares, burdens, concerns; all the things we are worried or anxious about) is the path to humility, freeing a person from constant concern for themselves and enabling them to be concerned for the needs of others."

The Greek is literally: "All the care of you having cast on him, because with him there is a care for you". It sounds a bit quaint; a bit like listening to someone learning to speak English. Yet for me fresh light is being shed on a well-known and beloved commandment. The link with humbling ourselves brings added motivation. The words "having cast" translate an aorist active participle. I'm not quite sure what that means! However, a simple present active participle usually refers to a continuous or imminent action. The aorist past tense in Greek often refers to a precise and significant one-off action in the past. (I am not a Greek scholar!)

As I see it, we are looking again at a crisis and a process. However, in this case I have only ever really understood it as a process. What I need to do is to humble myself and cast all my anxiety on God as an emphatic action, as a settled decision never to be reversed, with the recognition that it will have to be repeated on a daily basis. I hope that makes sense. I find it both motivational and comforting.